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cruel hand. The same idea is repeated in many forms.

HARDEN. And by many lovers-though they had not married their grandmothers! DELINA. If you can but jest, we had better drop the subject.

HARDEN. I crave your pardon. I shall try to dismiss altogether from my mind the seven-years disparity between the boy-poet and his bride. Proceed if you please.

DELINA. Not, if you are to dismiss from your mind that difference of age; though the sooner you rid your mind of the assumed domestic discord of which it has been made the sole basis, the better.

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DELINA.-Disclosures I have none. What can you make of scores of Wordsworth's sonnets, for example, but crystallizations of the poet's passing thoughts. So also is it with those Shakespearian gems. Sometimes they are his own thoughts, at other times he

manifestly impersonated others. Let me direct you to one of the latter. I have repeatedly pleased myself with the fancy that Shakespeare penned the twenty-second sonnet as the expression of his absent Anne's feelings; cheering her thus, by putting her own thoughts in verse, when in some despondent hour she has recalled how time with her started unfairly in the race :— "My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee, Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me; How can I then be elder than thou art? O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary, As I not for myself, but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary, As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again." HARDEN. You fancy this sonnet should be headed "Anna Shakespeare loquitur!"

DELINA.-It seems to me it might.

HARDEN. And that the poet has himself in view in "all that beauty" he refers to!

DELINA.--I suppose him to be only versifying the thoughts of his wife; in fact, rendering one of her letters into a sonnet.

HARDEN. An ingenious fancy, certainly; and not worse than some of the older hypotheses you reject. Better indeed than that of William Hart, the nephew, who was not born when some of the sonnets were written; or than William Hughes so ingeniously unearthed by Tyrwhitt out of a sorry pun! And you would find by a like process some definite meaning or other in each of those vague little abstractions.

DELINA.-Many of them are full of meaning and personal character. Look at the very one that follows:

"As an imperfect actor on the stage.

Who with his fear is put beside his part." The personality is obvious in the 134th sonnet, where he puns, and sports with his own name. It is no less so in the 111th, where the poet complains of the fortune that forced him into public life; and why not also, when, as in the 97th sonnet, he bewails an absence that made the "summer time" and "the teeming autumn" seem to him like the freezing of old December; or again in the 98th:

"From you have I been absent in the Spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his train, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

HARDEN. The story of Shakespeare's unhappy wedded life has been so long current, and so oft repeated, that I confess I have never before fully recognized how entirely it is an inference, or invention of later times. I shall turn a new leaf, and try to read the page on which you throw this novel light. But it will take some schooling before I can hope to reach your enviable state of faith; and without that I fear the sonnets must still remain a riddle. Perhaps I had better betake myself meanwhile to Niebuhr, and cultivate anew my school-boy faith in the loves of Numa Pompilius and the nymph Egeria.

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MARGUERITE KNELLER, ARTIST AND WOMAN.

BY LOUISA MURRAY.

CHAPTER I.

IN THE LUXEMBOURG.

picture you are now doing so much honour to was painted by me."

The young girl started, and dropped her brush. Instead of stooping for it, she looked

`OME years ago, a French painter of up at the speaker, who quietly picked it up

S a

hasty transit through the picture gallery of the Luxembourg, to look at the work of a young girl who was copying one of his own paintings;" Madame Roland before the Convention." At first sight there was nothing remarkable about this girl. She seemed about four and twenty, but she probably looked older than she really was from her sallow complexion, and the still and thoughtful expression of her face. Her features were irregular with no beauty of colouring to redeem their want of harmony, and her dress was as plain and unpretending as her person-a grey stuff gown and a black lace handkerchief tied over her black hair formed her costume. Yet, after a glance at her work, the great painter thought her worthy of some attention. He looked at her scrutinizingly for a minute or two; then he turned again to the picture on her easel.

"This copy is admirably done, Mademoiselle," he said at last.

as she had seemed before, there was neither coldness nor indifference in the look with which she regarded him, as she took it.

"It is true, Mademoiselle," he said, smiling at her eager questioning face, "I am Eugene Delacroix, and it is also true that I see in you all the elements of a great painter."

A handsome fair-haired young man, himself an art student who had before noticed this girl, and been struck by her peculiarly absorbed look and manner, and evident devotion to her work, was standing near, and saw that these words made her eyes gleam and her face glow. It was not flattered vanity that called forth the unwonted brightness, it was the noble delight of finding her genius recognized by one whom she knew to be a master in her art and whose authority she never dreamt of questioning; a pure and grateful joy such as the timid. Neophyte feels when his offering is approved

The girl never once looked up. She by the Hierophant of the shrine at which he seemed unmoved by his praise.

"It is very nearly, if not quite, equal to the original," continued the great painter. "I even think you have infused a nobler and more characteristic beauty into the heroine's face and figure than you found in your model; and given a simpler and more unconscious grandeur to her air and expression. And I should be something of a judge," he added, with a smile, "for the

kneels. Then for a moment, while every feature was illumed by the inward flame "brighter than any light on sea or shore," the young student thought her beautiful. Whether the great master did or not, he was evidently much interested. He made a few criticisms on her work which the girl received with grateful intelligence, and before he went away he asked her name and residence. She readily gave both, but the

young student, still watching her, could not here," cried Clarie. "See how she looks

catch her words.

"With your permission, Mademoiselle, we shall soon meet again," said the great painter, "till then I say to you: Courage; a great career is before you."

The girl watched his retreating figure for a moment; then she passed her hand across her brow as if to calm her emotions, and turned again to her work. But her hand shook, a mist seemed before her eyes, and while she was still struggling for self-command, she felt a sharp tap on her shoulder, and saw the pale small face of a sprightly girl of fourteen bending over her.

"So soon, Clarie," she said with a sigh. "So soon! so late you must mean. But you grow worse and worse. Here you sit painting day after day, week after week, month after month, I believe there is nothing else in the world that you care for. No wonder for Mère Monica to say you will make yourself ill. But how fast you are getting on, Marguerite," she exclaimed suddenly. "Thank goodness, it will soon be finished."

"Yes, but my work will not be finished with it, I hope. I have heard something to-day, Clarie, that will make me work harder than ever." "What nonsense! you couldn't work harder than you do. But what have you But what have you heard ?"

"I will tell you another time, perhaps. Now, I am ready to go home."

An elderly woman in a picturesque Norman cap and quaint black dress had accompanied Clarie, and now handed Marguerite her shawl. "Not that you need it to-day," she said in a brisk cheerful tone, "the air is so mild it is easy to see that summer is coming even in Paris, and the gardens are almost as sweet as the apple orchards in my old home. It will do you good to get into them out of this gloomy place."

"I don't know how she can bear to spend these bright spring mornings shut up

back at that tiresome painting. Take fast hold of her, Mère Monica, and lead her away, or we shall never get her out of this dungeon." And, while she was speaking, she tripped on before, leading the way down the steep stone staircase, more quietly followed by her companions. They passed through the beautiful gardens where the trees were putting forth their first green leaves, and the earliest flowers beginning to open. Children and nurse-maids, soldiers in their uniforms, priests in their robes, students, grisettes, and representatives of nearly all the bourgeois classes of Paris, strolled up and down or sat on the benches. Clarie would have been glad to stay for a while and move among the gay groups that attracted her lively fancy, but Marguerite reminded her that their father would be lonely, and hurried Clarie reluctantly followed, and, looking back at some striking costume she had caught sight of as they were descending a flight of steps, her foot slipped, and she fell on the pavement with a sudden cry.

on.

"Oh, Clarie, are you hurt?" exclaimed Marguerite, trying to raise her sister with a tenderness which showed there was at least one thing besides her art about which she cared.

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Yes, my arm," gasped Clarie. "Oh, don't touch me, Marguerite," she cried, in an accent of great pain; "let me lie here. Oh it pains me so much, it must be broken."

Marguerite turned white with terror, and Mère Monica wrung her hands in agony. Some passers-by stopped, but before any one else could offer assistance, the young student who had seen them in the Luxembourg, and who had followed them through the gardens, came forward.

"There is a surgeon living close by," he said to Marguerite, "let me carry Mademoiselle there. I will not hurt you," he said to the poor child, who was moaning piteously, "I will carry you very gently."

Raising the little one tenderly and dexterously in his arms he carried her to the surgeon's house, which was not a dozen yards away. Happily the arm was not broken, and the lotion which the surgeon applied soon relieved the pain. The young student, who gave his name as Maurice Valazé, then summoned a cabriolet in which Clarie was soon placed with her sister and Mère Monica.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle, but you owe me no thanks," he said, "are we not both artists, and should there not be fellowship between us. May I not call to-morrow to see how Mademoiselle Clarie is ?"

"Yes, certainly," said Marguerite, "if you will take the trouble. My father will be so glad to see you and thank you.” “Then I shall not fail to come," said Maurice, and so they parted.

M

CHAPTER II.

SOMETHING ABOUT MAURICE.

AURICE VALAZE'S father possessed a small estate in Provence, but as it was entailed on the eldest son, and his family was large, Monsieur Valazé père was not able to do more for Maurice than give him the means of living respectably while studying the art he had chosen as his profession. This was, however, sufficient to exempt Maurice from many difficulties which those poor students who are compelled to make art the "milch cow of the field," as well as the "celestial goddess," are obliged to encounter. And he did not misuse the advantages his independence secured him. His nature was high and refined, and not to be tempted by low pleasure or dissipation; his talents, enthusiasm, and skill in his art, were such as seemed to insure him future

eminence and fame; and at the same time he was so generous, frank, and spirited, that even the wildest of his fellow students loved him.

He was now preparing for a journey to Rome, where he intended to spend some years, hoping to find there, in marble, on canvas, and in those ruins which charm all who behold them into love with decay and death, the realization of those phantoms of grace and beauty which from childhood had haunted his imagination; and to learn from them the secret of concentrating his powers into some deathless form, through which he and all the world might recognize his right to participate in the immortal life of the children of genius.

For the last few days he had been making a study of some antique limbs and torsos which had been lately brought to the Luxembourg, and there he had first seen the young copyist, whose still steadfast face and intent absorbtion in her work had so greatly interested him. His excitable imagination had quickly exalted the slight service he had rendered Marguerite and her sister into something of a romantic adventure. He woke the next morning pleasantly excited as if he had found a fresh interest in life, and it was with a very agreeable sense of satisfaction that he arranged his hair and his dress at his looking-glass before setting out to pay his new friends a visit, and contemplated the reflection of the handsome face which he found there. In fact it would not have been easy to find a handsomer one any where; his hazel eyes were at once soft and brilliant, and his smooth broad brow and rich brown curls, and the clear pale hue of his complexion harmonized well with the refined and somewhat Greek type of his head and features; his figure was tall and perfectly well made; and all these advantages were scarcely marred by the careless carriage, the studied negligence of dress and the thick untrained beard and moustache of the modern art student.

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