lived and loved). Abruptly closing her cata- | who can feel them most. She was no Madame logue of new acquaintance, she adds:: d'Aubray, with ideas' of self-sacrifice admira"Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in bly adapted for others' uses, but disagreeably a manner that will surprise you as much as it unfitted for her own; and before setting down surprised me, by the coming in of Monsieur her preceipts of self-command under tempta Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman, whom we tion, she had tested them. Caroline Percy (in have mentioned to you, of superior understand-Patronage') controlling her love for Count ing and mild manners; he came to offer me his hand and heart! "My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not had time to have formed any judgment, except that I think nothing could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to live in Sweden. "In a letter to her cousin on the eighth of December, 1802 (the proposal was on the first), after explaining that M. Edelcrantz was bound to Sweden by ties of duty as strong as those which bound her to Edgeworth-Town, she writes: This is all very reasonable, but reasonable for him only, not for me; and I have never felt anything for him but esteem and gratitude.' Commenting on this passage, Mrs. Edgeworth says :— Maria was mistaken as to her own feelings. She refused M. Edelcrantz, but she felt much more for him than esteem and admiration; she was extremely in love with him. Mr. Edgeworth left her to decide for herself; but she saw too plainly what it would be to us to lose her, and what she would feel at parting from us. She decided rightly for her own future happiness and for that of her family, but she suffered much at the time and long afterwards. While we were at Paris, I remember that in a shop where Charlotte and I were making some purchases, Maria sat apart absorbed in thought, and so deep in reverie, that when her father came in and stood opposite to her she did not see him till he spoke to her, when she started and burst into tears. I do not think she repented of her refusel, or regretted her decision; she was well aware that she could not have made him happy, that she would not have suited his position at the Conrt of Stockholm, and that her want of beauty might have diminished his attachment. It was better perhaps that she should think so, as it calmed her mind, but from what I saw of M. Edelcranz, I think he was a man capable of really valuing her. I believe that he was much attached to her, and deeply mortified at her refusal. He continued to reside in Sweden after the abdication of his master, and was always distinguished for his high character and great abilities. He never married. He was, except very fine eyes, remarkably plain.' "This is an interesting and instructive episode. It lets in a flood of light upon those passages of her writings which inculcate the stern control of the feelings, the never-ceasing vigilance with which prudence and duty are to stand sentinel over the heart. So, then, she had actually undergone the hard trials she imposes and describes. They best can paint them Altenberg, is Maria Edgeworth subduing her love for the Chevalier Edelcranz." They left Paris in 1803; and the same year she published "Popular Tales," and in 1809 "Tales of Fashionable Life." Patronage," published in 1813, is the longest of her stories: Its origin is thus described : "Among others, written many years ago, was one called 'the History of the Freeman Family.' In 1787, my father, to amuse Mrs. Elizabeth Edgworth, when she was recovering after the birth of one of my brothers, related to us every evening, when we assembled in her room, part of this story, which I believe he invented as he went on. It was found so interesting by his audience, that they regretted much that it should not be preserved, and I in consequence began to write it from memory. The plan, founded on the story of two families, one making their way in the world by independent efforts, the other by mean acts, and by courting the great, was long afterwards the groundwork of Patronage." In 1813 the family went to London. They were people of good birth and fortune, and Maria was a favourite in society. A long letter from her gives an account of her visit. It is full of details of celebrated people. Mrs. Edgeworth says: "One day, coming too late to dinner at Mr. Horner's, we found Dr. Parr very angry at our having delayed and then interrupted dinner; but he ended by giving Maria his blessing. * We unfortunately missed seeing Madame d'Arblay, and we left London before the arrival of Madame de Staël." * * This story falls in with a story printed in Moore's Diary : "Iu talking of getting into awkward scrapes at dinner tables, Lady Dunmore mentioned a circumstance of the kind in which Rogers was concerned. It was at the time when Madame de Staël was expected in London, and somebody at table (there being a large party) asked when she was likely to arrive. 'Not till Miss Edgworth is gone, replied Rogers; Madame de Staël would not like two stars shining at the same time.' The words were hardly out of his mouth, when he saw a gentleman rise at the other end of the table and say in a solemn tone: 'Madame la Baronne de Stael est incapable d'une telle bassesse.' It was Auguste de Stael, her son, whom Rogers had never before nothing else. She went to Paris in 1820, and her letters from thence are among her best. In France, as in England, she was received everywhere; the main difficulty being to pronounce her name, the nearest approach to which was "Edgeratz." "At one house, a valet, after Maria had several timer repeated Edgeworth,' exclaimed, 'Ah, je renonce a ca; and throwing open the door of the saloon, announced, 'Madame Marie et Mesdemoiselles ses sœurs.' Byron speaks of some Russian or Polish names as 'names that would descend to posterity if posterity could but pronounce them.' Many English names are exposed to the same disadvantage. An English traveller passed the better part of an evening at Tieck's, at Dresden, in 1834, vainly sndeavoring to teach some German ladies to pronounce Wordsworth.' Few of them got nearer than Vudvutt.' The form of the visiting cards of the party, adopted (she says) after due deliberation, was Madame Marie Edgeworth et Mesdemoiselles ses sœurs." 6 6 Here are some details of her Parisian life :"We have seen Mademoiselle Mars twice, or thrice, rather, in the Mariage de Figaro' and in the little pieces of Le Jaloux sans Amour,' and 'La Jeunesse de Henri Cinq,' and admire her exceedingly. In petit comité the other night at the Duchesse d'Escars, a discussion took place between the Duchesse de la Force, Marmont, and Pozzo di Borgo, on the bon et mauvais ton of different expressions-bonne société is an expression bourgeoise-you may say bonne compagnie or la haute société. 'Voilà des nuances, as Madame d'Escars said. Such a wonderful jabbering as these grandees made about these small matters. It put me in mind of a conversation in the World,' on good company, which we all used to admire.' He "She met all the scientific men of note at Cuvier's, who gave a good instance of Bonaparte's insisting on a decided answer. asked me Faut-il introduire le sucre de betterave en France?' 'D'abord, Sire, il fautsonger à vos colonies.'-' Faut-il avoir le sucre de betterave en France?' 'Mais, Sire, il faut examiner.'' Bah! je le demanderai à Berthellot.' She was very fond of Madame de Staël and Madame de Broglie. Here is an anecdote of the former: papa vous dédommagera bien de tout ça. Shé immediately, wiping the tears from her eyes, answered: Eh! oui, monsieur, mon père songe à mon avenir.' There was more than presence of mind, there was heart and soul and greatness of mind in this answer." In December, 1820, she returned to England, where the last years of her life were spent. Scott says of her, in 1827: "It is scarcely possible to say more of this very remarkable person than that she not only completely answered but exceeded the expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naiveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which she unites with such formidable powers of acute observation." To which the reviewer adds: "The object of the most refined and cultivated society of London and Paris, in their ordinary intercourse, is not to instruct or be instructed, dazzle or be dazzled, but to please and be pleased. Now, Miss Edgeworth was preeminently the fashion year after year, and she wisely acted on Colton's maxim in Lacon :' 'In all societies it is advisable to associate if possible with the highest. In the grand theatre of human life, a box-ticket takes you through the house.' " WOMEN'S RIGHTS. The right to wake when others sleep; And meekly point to Him who died; LEAVES FOR THE THE LITTLE ONES. CHRISTMAS MORNING.] BY VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND. It was Christmas morning at our house, and at everybody's, for that matter, and of course Uncle Theodore, or Uncle Ted, as we called him oftenest, was cross-he always was in the morning; we expected that just as much as we did the sun's rising. There was a good deal of excuse for him, though, for he was dyspeptic and was subject to twinges of gout and touches of neuralgia; and anyone of those infirmities, mamma says, would make a sinner, for the time being, oat of the temper of a saint. I don't know that anybody really likes Uncle Ted the less for being cross, any more than we like a fine, clear October day less for the white frost that glitters, and the sharp, bracing air that chills through its early morning. Uncle Ted is an invalid, and we set down his peevishness to that; and after breakfast is over, and he is comfortably settled in his arm-chair with his newspapers and his beloved books about him, this dear, fretful, splenetic Uncle Ted grows bland as the day does, shaking off the white frosts from the grass with its sparkling light, and striking out the chill from the air with its warm, mellow beams. Uncle Ted is a handsome man, too; dark and sallow, and a little wrinkled with illness rather than with years, as he is a good deal this side of fifty, and I searched the other day a quarter of an hour among his thick, dark locks for a grey hair, and I never found one. We live with Uncle Ted-mamma, sister Adelaide and I, or he lives with us. He was papa's younger brother, and I have heard Mamma say he was the indulged, spoiled pet and idol of the family. When grandpa' lost his property, and had all that trouble, which broke his heart and shortened his days, Uncle Theodore went to the West Indies and made a fortune there; but he paid a dreadful price for it, for the long years in that hot climate chafed his spirits and broke the vigour of his constitution. But the peevishness is on the surface; the warm, generous heart throbs below all that, and in his happy moods, with his stories and his playfulness that flashes a perpetual glimmer of light among them, and will hold you enchanted all-day like the fairy tales, or dear old thumbstained "Robinson Crusoe," in his happy moods, as I said, I do believe Uncle Ted is the most wonderful and delightful man in the whole world. But it was Christmas morning, and I knew Uncle Ted well enough to know that it would 'go across his grain" to say one word about the presents I'd found in my stocking and spread out on the table by my bedside. "Tut, tut!" he'd say. "Don't let's have auy fuss over those gimcracks," though he went into town with mamma and Adelaide in the damp, biting December air only the afternoon before to select the gifts himself. When the time came I might chatter like a magpie over each, but now it would not be a particle of use. We all understood Ted and humoured him. There was to be a wedding opposite, that Christmas day-a very grand affair, you see; for the people were very grand indeed who lived there. Such preparations had been going on days before! Such a constant ringing of bells, and running to and fro, and delivering of bundles. The servants, even down to the errand-boy, had a solemn, mysterious air and look every time they showed themselves out of the doors and windows. It was a clear, bright winter's morning. It seemed to me somehow that the very sunshine felt that it was Christmas, and sparkled for joy a little brighter than ever. We stood at the front sitting-room windows, Uncle Ted and I, watching the people hurry past, and everybody had a bright look like the morning, as though there were presents at home, and it was Christ mas. But across there, at the great brown house, the bells kept up an incessant peal. A thought suddenly shot among mine-I don't know how it came there, but with it I turned and faced Uncle Ted, and two or three minutes afterwards he too turned from the window and caught me looking at him "Well, Kathie, what has put that little grave face on you, child? Are you thinking about me?" "I'd rather not tell, if you please, Uncle Ted." "But I want to know, and I must, therefore tell me, little girl." There was no use having any more words about it; so I made a clean breast of my thoughts. I was just thinking, Uncle Ted, that I wondered whether you would not have been a happier and a pleasanter man if you'd got married too! Then, you see, you'd have a wife that was all your own to love, and boys and girls about you, to tease, and trouble, and bother you all day; and yet it seems to me that it would have been a great deal better than being just as you are now, though of course I don't know." He looked at me a moment with a curious kind of a smile about his lips, and something half-sad in his eyes, I thought. "Little Queen Mab," he said, in a minute, "that ls a spear's thrust at me that no man or woman in the world would have made. It's gone home, too; it's hurt me, little girl, and that's more than I'd own to any living thing besides yourself." "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say anything to hurt you, Uncle Ted." "I know you didn't. There, now, don't look grave, Peablossom. You've done no harm. So you think I need to be happier and pleasanter, do you ?" "Sometimes, when you are ill, and-and-" "Don't stammer." "I was going to say cross!" Then he went to the fire, and spreading his long, thin fingers over the sparkling bed of coals, he said to himself, "Twelve years ago to day-twelve long years!" "Where was it-what was it, Uncle Ted?" A story lay behind that, and whether it was grave or gay, a story of Uncle Ted's was one of the things nobody could afford to lose. He looked at me with a strange sorrowfulness in his fine brown eyes. "It was away off in the East Indies, dear, and the hot, dead-blue sky was overhead; the birds, glittering sparks of gold and crimson darting in and out of the vast branches of the banyan-tree; the low sound of the tides slipping in among the burning, yellow sands of the coast-all this is about me, and I am lying at the coolest end of a long verandah, where the air, swooning away among the heavy fragrances, rouses itself sometimes into a fresh pulse of coolness. They had carried me out there in the early dawn to wait for life or death, for I had been brought to the very grave with one of the fevers of the climate. But at last, over my throbbing pulses and fevered brain, a sudden sleep came down and steeped my senses, and at last I woke up, and asked them what day it was; and they told me. "It was Christmas in my native land, that seemed as distant to me then as the mountains of the moon do to you now. I lay there and thought how far off the snows lay white on the hills, and the winds blew strong and fresh among them; and how the church-bells were ringing, and merry voices slipping along the greetings and blessings, and the little children were wild with frolic and delight over their toys, and there were thanks and praises, and gifts overflowing in happy hearts-for it was Christmas at home! "And as I lay there, and heard the slipping tides, and the sharp voice of the insects, and the singing of the birds on that morning under the equator, a man, as I thought, doomed in a few hours to die, and be buried there, afar from my land and my kindred, all this seemed very hard and bitter, and the beauty and the glory around sickened my soul. The physician suddenly bent over me. He laid a hand on my pulse and another on my forehead. Ah, sir!' he said, there's a change! You've been asleep for the last five hours, and that sleep has saved your life! It will be a long pull, but we'll have you on your feet yet!" "How my heart jumped and thanked God for the words! It was as though a cool breath from my native hills had rolled in from the tropics and waved freshly over me. I shall see them all again,' I said: "the old homes, and the green fields, with the little brooks dimpling and laughing, and slipping away in happy songs among them; best of all, I shall see the de ar old home faces all lighted up with joy and welcome!' and so the faint life woke up from the hot fever and stirred at my heart." "And this was true, Uncle Ted-here you are this Christmss-day." "Yes, Kathie; but the fever did a terrible work on me. I came home, and I've been an invalid ever since; and a sharp little girl, who wasn't in the world that Christmas morning, has the audacity to tell her uncle this one that he isn't as happy as he might be!" "Well, I tried not to say it, but you would make me, you know." "I know it. I take the blame on myself." Just then the breakfast-bell rang. After the meal was over-a bright meal, with merry jests on all sides-mammy said, with a glance, halftender, half-sorrowful at Adelaide, "There was a young man here last night who desired a Christmas gift; shall I let him have it?" "Adelaide's face was all blushes: "My sister is a dozen years older than I, and Uncle Ted, who has seen them, says she's as graceful as a lotus of the Nile. She is something bet ter than that, I know." “Oh,” I said, “I understand what you mean, mamma-" Ashley Earle wants you to give him our Adelaide for a Christmas gift. It would be nice to have a grand wedding like the one across the way; but I would rather keep my sister's.' "And I would rather keep my daughter's," added mamma." "And I would rather keep my niece's," said Uncle Ted; "so Ashley Earle, fine fellow though he is, and flattering tongue though he has, must go without his Christmas gift, Adelaide." vered in her cheeks; but, for all they said, I And she laughed again, and the crimson wadidn't feel so certain about Ashley Earle's not having his Christmas gift. I "That small child is getting a-head of us, Julia," said Uncle Ted. "What shall we do with her?" And then, in his comical way, my uncle related what I had said to him that morning when we stood by the windows. They all laughed. I now remembered the question I had in store for him." "Uncle Ted, who was Queen Mab ?" "Don't you know? She was the little Queen of the fairies, and if you had lived three hundred years ago in Merrie England,' you would have been able to tell us all about her, for the children were sung to sleep with nursery ditties, and roused with stories about her," "Oh, Uncle Ted, how nice and funny. I almost wish I'd lived then!" "You would not have found everything' nice and funny then,' my child. The Christmas of to-day is better than it was three hundred years ago, for the lads and lasses of your height." "But I want to know more of Queen Mab of the Fairies, Uncle Ted?" "So you shall, sometime, and about her coach drawn by a 'small grey-coated gnat,' and all that." "But meanwhile I want to hear about those Christmas-gifts, and see them all spread before me?" "Oh, yes; they are be autiful, Uncle Ted," and off I hurried for them. And this was our Christmas morning. And what was yours?" SANTA CLAUS. No doubt you have heard of dear old Santa Claus, ever since you were big enough to hang up a stocking beside the chimney, and you had a half defined belief in him long after you knew whose kind fingers it was that filled your plates and stockings. Perhaps you would like to know how this name came to be used in connection with Christmas goodies. Many years ago there was a good monk in a foreign land, who used to be very kind to little children. He never seemed more pleased than when he had a troop of them about him, and he usually had his hands laden with good things for them. So the little children always shouted for joy when the good Claudius came among them. After he was dead, the Catholic Church gave him the title of Saint Claudius; and when the merry Christmas times came round, and bright evergreens, and crimson holly-buds, decked out the hall and the cottage, when the little ones woke in the morning, to rejoice over their beautiful gifts, it was common for mothers to say that the good Saint Claudius sent them. In the course of years, the tradition was lost by the many, and the name was corrupted into the now familiar one of Santa Claus. I think it is as harmless a tradition as the Church of Rome has preserved, and in its modified form has had more believers than any other. THE TOI L E T. (Specially from Paris.) FIRST FIGURE. - Dress of straw-coloured poult de soie, trimmed at bottom with a Russian plaiting, on which is laid a deep band of black velvet vandyked at the edge. Tunic of the same material, presenting two long points in front, and rounded behind, where it forms a Camargo panier. Round the tunic a flounce of Chantilly lace, surmounted by a black velvet bow. Corsage cut low and square, with wide square basques slit up at the sides. Both corsage and basques are bordered by black velvet cut in sharp points. Black velvet waistband, with a large bow and short ends behind. Chemisette of embroidered muslin, bordered with valencienne round the top. Coiffure composed of a tulle scarf, straw-colour, sprinkled with small black velvet stars. Three roses as a diadem in front. Shoes of straw-coloured gros grain. SECOND FIGURE.-Toilet of mauve faille with a corsage open in front, forming two wide evers of mauve velvet bordered with white satin. Sleeves puffed at top and slashed. Diadem coiffure composed of tea-roses and white roses, with a black lace veil falling on the hair. THIRD FIGURE.-Bride's toilet, composed of a first skirt of white silk half-train shape, and trimmed with flounces. Polonaise of white gros grain fastened at the side. The white silk corsage underneath is high with tight sleeves, which the wide sleeves of the polonaise do not conceal. Gros grain silk waistband. Bouquet of orange-flowers at the side. Mary Stuart wreath of orange flowers with a trail falling over the hair. Long white tulle veil. Shoss of white gros grain. In this toilet, when seen from behind, the polonaise forms a large point. |