gered hither before rolling over in death.

And here our fault-finding ends. It is not much that we have been able to say, after all. In another painter, such inaccuracies might pass with out notice, or at least uncriticized; but committed by Landseer they at once assume importance, and therefore vex as much as they surprise us. Nor is it from his artistic eminence alone that they derive this importance. We are accustomed to find in his pencil all the truth which we look for in the naturalist: thus he has become an authority, a recognised, reliable authority. And just as we should rate differently a discrepancy in an Animated Nature and the Histoire Naturelle of a Buffon, so with the works of Landseer and others which are like unto his. The qualities whose absence may be borne with in Sir Thomas Lawrence, dare in no wise fail on the canvas of an Hogarth.

And now let us, as we so often do when standing before the engravings, soliloquise as it were aloud, and hold converse with ourselves about them, dwelling with a lingering delight on certain episodes which recal to our minds pleasant remembrances, and revive a thousand exquisite associations.

How we love to lie in the sun on the heather, and, with the two sheepdogs, watch the nestling Twins.' How mild the breeze, what freshness and health in the atmosphere. We should like to ramble to the upland where the ewes are feeding, their little ones kneeling beside them, to skip away a moment after and gambol with a nodding hare-bell. What peace there is here! There is quiet and love in the earth and in the sky.

A mighty knowing' billie' seems the one dog, with wisdom enough, if need were, to hold

A lang digression About the lords o' the creation; whilst the other's good-natured, 'honest, sonsie face,' betokens the trusty performer of his duty, uncouth, perhaps, but certainly gentlehearted. Good dogs! We should like to call you by name, to pat your 'towsie backs,' and have a run with you on the moor.

How glad we should be to know

what becomes of that Stag at Bay!" Unless their master be near, those two deer-hounds will effect but little; for the stag having taken to the water, all the chances are in his favour. Our notion is he is not wounded; but followed by the fleetfooted hounds, and being of course hard pressed, he has put off from land to escape them. For it is July, the stag's best time; and such a hart of grease soon gets winded, and can no more scour the hill-side than could a portly alderman. He has for this reason sought the plain and the loch. And such broad back and sides! Why, he would be blown in no time. We have seen some good stags in our day, and one or two that filled us with wonderment as they lay on the greensward; but of such bulk as this, none has yet met our gaze. And you, Sir Edwin, did you ever see his fellow?

What to us is grandest and most real is the threatening sky. A thunderstorm is driving on, and the surface of the water is already ruffled by that breath which at such times so unaccountably will arise, as though it came from out the earth; from a sigh, increasing till it becomes a blast. It does not rain yet, but before long the large drops will fall pattering on the lake, and the thunder reverberate along the shore. How close it is; how heavy and oppressive the air!

Now let us look at 'Night.' Here the season is as different as the hour. It is more than a couple of months later in the year, and autumnal mists gather, and drift upwards from the glens below. This is no summer moonlight: the nights are already getting cold, and the clouds cast murky shadows on the damp ground.

But to gaze on earth and sky in Morning is our great delight. None save he who has been out betimes, and from the mountain-top has watched the day come hovering over the ridges, and seen it growing in the atmosphere, till at last all was light, and there was nowhere any dimness,-he only to whom this is familiar can appreciate as it deserves the truthfulness of this scene, and be transported by its exceeding great beauty; for verily it is transporting. How clear is the atmo

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sphere; of what a bright, bracing day is that morn the forerunner. The firmament is all light, and the ridge opposite lies, too, in light. It is stealing downwards over the hillside, making the heather glow; but in the hollow where lies the lake, the sun's rays have not yet quite mastered the vapours which are floating over it. The searching rays, though, pierce through them, and they already begin to disperse. What a stillness is over the scene, and in the air, and up in the sky. What a dawn stillness, too. How cool the morning. The bird of prey is taking his first flight; and his peculiar cry, as heard aloft, will almost be welcome, breaking the intense quiet that reigns around. He will wheel a few times in the air, at each circle approaching nearer his prey, and at last will swoop down, to share the banquet with the fox.

Each part of this glorious landscape is a study bringing ever fresh delight. No one who had not felt -deeply felt, and with a thrill, not of mere joy, but of love and gratitude -the majesty before him, could have produced the like. The beauty Landseer saw and watched unfolding must have entered into his heart; for there only can it be so treasured that not a particle be lost: such moments must have been to him 'religious musings;' and while standing among the rocks at morning, his whole being been moved to offer up an orison, as priest in that temple of God.

Had Sir Edwin liked, he might have been as great as landscape painter-Psha! what are we talking about. Let us rather say, 'HOW GREAT A LANDSCAPE PAINTER DO WE POSSESS IN LANDSEER!'

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'The Twins,' 'The Deer Pass,' 'The Challenge,' 'The Sanctuary,' -are not these all landscapes? Do we not call Claude's Flight into Egypt' a landscape, and are these pictures less so because of a figure on the foreground?

6

How charming is The Sanctuary!' How mellow the distance; what repose in that bay where the crescent moon is reflected. But the quiet is different from that in Morning: the atmosphere is another, inclining rather to reverie, and to thoughts sweetly sad. It might be a spell which lay in that evening stillness-a charm as yet unbroken which bound the solitude. Not a landscape painter? Why, he is one of our very first and best.

It were an interesting inquiry, what influence Court favour and exclusive aristocratic patronage have had upon Landseer's artistic development, and how far they may have directed, perhaps changed, the bent of his genius. He alone can know this;

but it is not impossible that even he is unaware of the full extent of the modifying power. And should he be so, he may not be willing to acknowledge it to himself.

Now, God speed thee, Edwin Landseer. And may He give thee still many years of health and unweakened powers to enjoy the works of His hands with thy peculiar and loving perception of their beauty! And as we hope to retain an undiminished love for Nature as long as our faculties are undimmed, be it our lot to see what thy genius may yet achieve! Large already is our debt of gratitude to thee for the past. With a final God-speed,' we bid thee heartily farewell.

CHARLES Boner.

IT T is more than twenty years ago since I was at school with Laurence Mountjoy, but I remember him well. The life of most men, we will hope, is brighter at its close than its beginning,emerging from the grossness and cruelty of the schoolboy and the passions of youth into the light of reason and knowledge; but that of him I speak of was far otherwise. The height he reached was amidst thunderclouds, and the road before him was no lighter, though the way he came up was only misty, and the place from whence he started lay open to the sun. He was, indeed, a glorious boy, with spirits inexhaustible as long as his pocketmoney lasted, and both ever ready to be employed in the entertainment of his friends, 'too clever by half" for the majority of his companions, and snubbed and bullied in consequence, but having a little knot of ardent admirers all his own; the fate of most wits at school, where practical jokes and drinking-songs are chiefly acceptable, and higher kinds of humour are contemned and stigmatized by the all-degrading term 'facetiousness.'

What may your name be?' drawled a senior boy to Mountjoy, upon his first arrival.

It may be Beelzebub, but it isn't,' replied that youth; and he was thrashed upon the spot for the repartee. Nevertheless he soon got to be liked for his other qualitieshis generosity, activity, and beauty, a gift which prepossesses boys in favour of its owner, as it does the lowest classes and savages, in an uncommon degree. I seem to see him now beside the grub-cart,' where every enemy of the digestive organs from cocoa-nuts to toffy had abode, standing treat to all comers with a smile of welcome, or bounding over the play-fields with his golden hair streaming in the wind, and his eyes lit with the light which glows from a happy heart.

Laurence Mountjoy was good at most things in the sporting way, but he was best of all at raffles. He would have raffled his teeth if he could have got anybody to put in for them, and actually did take a

ticket cheerfully on one occasion for the chance of the reversion of another boy's boots. Upon the eve of the Derby day-which was his great festival-he would employ himself for hours in cutting long slips of paper, and inscribing them with the names of the running horses for sweep' purposes, and despite the strict discipline to which we were all subject, he never failed to see that great race run. Over the high wall with the broken glass, and along the dusty road for miles and miles, now whipped off from behind some aristocratic 'drag'-now hanging by his hands to the back of a costermonger's cart, elbowed by pickpockets, pushed about by policemen, and catching only glimpses of the course through legs and arms, returning in the like unpleasant fashion to certain flogging and imprisonment, he went and came, content and even boastful. Whenever a pack of cards was confiscated, whenever dice-of home manufacture, and cut out (for silence sake) of india-rubber-were forfeited, Laurence was sure to be their owner. He bet upon the number of stripes that would be given him, and on what crop of blisters the cane would raise upon his hands, and he invented a hundred games with slate and pencil, paper and pen, for school times. In a word, what whittling and expectoration are to the Yankee, gambling in all its branches was to him; it compensated for pain, for toil, and for loss of liberty, and never came amiss to him in any place or time. He came to school one winter evening, at the commencement of the half-year, in a Hansom cab from London with another boy. They had bought a great Roman Catholic taper, and held it by turns between their knees (although it struck them somehow as an impiety), and played cribbage all the way. A terrible voice cried down unto them, on a sudden, two for his heels,' for Laurence's adversary had omitted to mark the knave, and the cabman had become so interested a spectator through the little hole at the top, that he couldn't help rectifying the error. It terrified them immensely

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at the time, but Mountjoy never took it (as the other did) as a warning.

But we all have our weak points,' we said, and his is the pleasure he takes in losing his own money, or in winning other people's to spend it on them again; and for my part, when I left school for college, there was none whose hand I clasped so tenderly, none whose companionship I was so loth to part with as that of Laurence Mountjoy.

I was his senior by a year or two, and when he came up to Cambridge, was within a few terms of my degree, so we were not much together. He was grown very graceful and handsome, and the qualities which had been ignored at school were at the university gladly recognised. It would have been impossible, amongst the freshmen, to have picked out one more popular, and deservedly so, than he. He did not read very much, indeed, but he talked of reading as though he would be Senior Wrangler. He subscribed to the Simeon Fund, the Drag, and the Pusey Testimonial; was a fluent speaker at the 'Union,' a tolerable musician, a good pool-player, a passable poet, and, in short, promised to become one of those Admirable (university) Crichtons who from time to time glance meteor-like athwart the academic course, and then disappear wholly, and are lost in the darkness of the outward world.

We had pulled in the same boat one afternoon, in the 'Scratch Races' of our club-which, rendered into modern English, means in races wherein the boats' crews are drawn by lot-and we had been successful. As Laurence jumped out at the winning post, breathless, and with heightened colour, his broad bare chest rising and falling like a wave, I thought I had never seen a more splendid assurance of a youth;' his sparkling eyes and honest hearty laugh, as he drew forth his little betting-book-novel accompaniments to such a proceeding as they weregave hope of one who would not slip nor fall from honour, even on the 'turf' itself.

6

We crossed over to the Plough' that night and dined together, all the crew of us. The 'Plough,' where

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first on earth egg-flip was made, and where pre-eminent for ever egg-flip is; where shakes the wellworn bagatelle board on its uncertain legs in the small sanded parlour; and where the lawn slopes down to the river's edge, which every afternoon in summer time is trod by the flash and the fair.' And there he sang the songs we loved at school, and such as suited careless youth, and was the soul of all our jovial company. As he drove me home through the May midnight, his talk fell light and fresh upon my heart, which was about its hardening time, when Reason stays the fire-flood of life, and Prudence moulds it in her iron hands, and as we reached the college gates, I said, You make the hours fly fast, Laurence; that's one o'clock.'

'The quarter to,' he said, 'I'll bet a crown. Nor was that matin-time more jarred, I think, by noise and tumult of the day, than his bright spirit then was tarnished by dishonour or the breath of shame.

I left soon after for the Inner Temple, and while I ate my terms, made flying visits, now and then, to Cambridge. During one of these, when I had been two years a graduate, I gave a supper-party at the 'Bull.' Mountjoy was late, and we sat down without him-fornobody waits supper at college, even for a lord,and we talked over the absent man, as the mode is. I thought there could be no harm in a playful kick at such a favourite, and offered to wager that he was detained by cards. 'I would not like to be his adversary,' said one.

Nor I his partner,' said another, 'lest old Hornie fly away with the two of us with pardonable freedom, for he has the devil's own luck.'

Yes, and the devil's own play, too,' said a third, sulkily.

'It doesn't keep him from the duns, at all events,' added the man next to me; 'I dare say there is some pertinacious fanatic waiting for him upon his staircase now, who makes him so late, after all.'

Much distressed by this news, and especially by the tone of the other remarks, I requested in a low voice to be informed further. I learnt that Mountjoy was not so popular as he used to be; affected a

bad fast set, to whom it was supposed he had lost considerable sums; was certainly in temporary difficulties, and very much changed in manners and appearance. Further information was cut short by the entrance of Mountjoy himself. If I had not been expecting him and no other, I doubt if I should have known him; his face was pale and haggard in the extreme, his eyesbrighter than ever were set in deep black circles, and his clothes hung loose upon his limbs; he welcomed me, however, with all his old cordiality, and threw about the arrows of his wit as usual: they were more barbed than they were wont to be, the sheet-lightning had become forked. The talk having turned upon the choice of a profession, he fastened upon his opposite neighbour, Wells (who had announced his intention of taking orders), like a gadfly. It was Wells, I then remembered, who had complained of his 'devil's own play.'

'Strange,' said Laurence, isn't it, that all our fastest men take holy orders? And still more singular how rapid that metamorphosis is-the French prints, the tandemwhips, the coloured clothes, are sold at a frightful sacrifice, and a spick-and-span divine turned out the next morning. What a pity, Wells, to have to throw away that exquisite taste of yours'-Wells had a red tie-'upon the merest black and white.'

Hesaid many things of this savage sort, and drank off glass after glass of wine very rapidly; some of the rest were not more backward either in retort or drinking, and occasion soon arose when in my capacity as host I was obliged to interfere.

He said I was a greater fool than I looked,'-'Who said so ?''So you are,'-'Shame, shame,' 'Here's a lark!' were expressions that burst forth from every side, until Chair, chair,'-'Silence for the Lord Chief Justice,' and 'Here's an opinion, free gratis for nothing,' quelled them upon the homeopathic system of counter-irritation, and obtained for me a hearing.

'I am sure Mountjoy will apologize for that remark of his,' I said; 'we are all college friends, and most of us old schoolfellows, and we are

not come here to pick quarrels, but chicken bones.'

'He called me-he called me,' hiccuped one, 'a gr-greater fool than I looked.'

'My dear fellow,' said Mountjoy, holding his hand across the table in the most affectionate manner, ‘I retract the observation altogether; you are not such a fool as you look, as everybody knows.'

The offended party made as if he would kiss the proffered palm, and endeavoured to explain that he was perfectly satisfied; we broke up amidst shouts of laughter, and in high good-humour.

I have left a few men at my rooms to-night,' said Mountjoy, and if you will join them in a game at vingt-et-un, come at once, before gates shut.'

I was anxious to see the sort of company he kept, and adjourned accordingly to his college rooms. Six or seven men were sitting round his table as he entered, whom he had left (with some unselfishness, I am sure) to sup with me; they had been eating nothing, although food was piled in plenty on a piano in the corner, but a number of empty bottles proved their thirst. They did not interrupt their game for a moment, but one of them moved his chair to give us room.

'Eleven; now then for a ten!' roared the dealer. Fifteen-curse my luck—and nine; overdrawn, by Jove.' A peal of joy rose from the rest. You only pay me a skiv, though,' said one, mournfully; a fiver for me,' said another; and 'you pay twelve pounds, six pounds on each card,' added a third. They were playing then a good deal too high for me, and as I should have thought for Mountjoy also. I declined, therefore, joining the party, but stood with my back to the fire, and watched the game.

Vingt-et-un, like other matters which depend mostly upon luck, is a considerable trial for the temper, and the present company did not seem to have much patience to spare; they were more or less in wine, too, and exhibited a great contrast in their manner to the quiet and friendly fashion in which cards are (and should be) usually played at college. The chief cause of this