young man-aquiline-with a sort of eagle-look-light hair-long and thin, and as fine as silk-very light in his beard, so that it scarcely showed. Oh, God help us! what is it -what is it You both know whom I mean." Neither of them spoke; but the eyes of the two met in a single look, from which both withdrew, as if the communication were a crime. With a shudder Vincent approached his mother; and, speechless though he was, took hold of her, and drew her to him abruptly. Was it murder he read in those eyes, with their desperate concentration of will and power? The sight of them, and recollection of their dreadful splendour, drove even Susan out of his mind. Susan, poor gentle soul ! -what if she broke her tender heart, in which no devils lurked? 'Mother, come - come," he said, hoarsely, raising her up in his arm, and releasing the hand which the extraordinary woman beside her still clasped fast. The movement roused Mrs Hilyard as well as Mrs Vincent. She rose up promptly from the side of the visitor who had brought her such news. "I need not suggest to you that this must be acted on at once," she said to Vincent, who, in his agitation, saw how the hand, with which she leant on the table, clenched hard till it grew white with the pressure. "The man we have to 66 deal with spares nothing." She stopped, and then, with an effort, went up to the half-fainting mother, who hung upon Vincent's arm, and took her hands and pressed them close. "We have both thrust our children into the lion's mouth," she cried, with a momentary softening. Go, poor woman, and save your child if you can, and so will I -we are companions in misfortune. And you are a priest, why cannot you curse him?" she exclaimed, with a bitter cry. The next moment she had taken down a travelling bag from a shelf, and, kneeling down by a trunk, began to transfer some things to it. Vincent left his mother, and went up to her with a sudden impulse, "I am a priest, let me bless you," said the young man, touching with a compassionate hand the dark head bending before him. Then he took his mother away. He could not speak as he supported her down stairs; she, clinging to him with double weakness, could scarcely support herself at all in her agitation and wonder when they got into the street. She kept looking in his face with a pitiful appeal that went to his heart. "Tell me, Arthur, tell me!" She sobbed it out unawares, and over and over before he knew what she was saying. And what could he tell her? "We must go to Susan poor Susan!" was all the young man could say. THE FIRST GUID DAY. Ir is the showery April- There's a promise in the wun'. To doves amang them nestlin' Say, "Winter's passed away." It is the herald, April The farmer looks abroad, Ahint his harrows play, While dreams of wealth are whispered It is the buddy April The roads wi' bairns are thrang, Whase fairy glee is burstin' In rude and rapturous sang; Ilk little face but lately Sae joyless and sae blae, Is wreathed wi' smiles and roses On the First Guid Day. And hark! that gentle hummin' It is the joyous April ; We feel we kenna hooAs if the world were better, And our lease o' life were new. Our hearts are beatin' lightly, The bard below is firin' To sing a crownin' lay. DAVID WINGATE. THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE. To print with care, and place on the shelf of the student's library, in the shape of a readable book, some ancient manuscript difficult of access and hard to be deciphered, is just that task which a liberal government can, and ought to accomplish. No boon of this kind could be more valuable to the historical student than the book before us, which, if it were only out of gratitude to Her Majesty's Treasury, and the Master of the Rolls, and all the public-spirited men who have urged the necessity of printing such historical records, we ought not to allow to pass unnoticed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as Mr Thorpe tells us in a preface which is, unfortunately, only too brief, comprises the period from the invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar, to the accession of Henry II., A.D. 1154; and is, conjointly with the ecclesiastical history of Beda, the principal source whence our early chroniclers have derived their matter. Lappenberg, in his History of England under the Saxon Kings,' speaks of this record in the following terms :-"After Beda, the chief sources of the early history of England, and one of the most important in the whole historiography of northern Europe, is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, composed in the language of the country, and, in the later centuries, abounding in contemporaneous narratives. A thorough critical examination of its authori ties, manuscripts, and versions, would be a work of the highest utility for English history, but which has hitherto been but very partially attempted, and without any great result. Such an examination is the more difficult, as the texts of the manuscripts, or rather the elaborations of them, which have been written in various monasteries, often differ from each other, and have, in the printed edition, been by their editors blended together without regard either to dialect or locality." In the edition which is now published, the texts of the several manuscripts are printed apart and entire. How much this will facilitate that critical examination which Lappenberg deems so desirable, need not be insisted on. A translation is added, which embraces the several texts where these agree or can be collated; all material deviations or additions are placed in a separate part of the page, with an indication of the manuscript whence they are derived. The publication is very complete, and will be available to the English reader as well as the Saxon scholar. Who wrote the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in what age was it written? These are questions which we naturally ask; but, as is the case with many ancient records, the answer is very unsatisfactory. Where it begins to be a chronicle of contemporary events-which is the most important question-may probably be detected by a careful examination of the text itself. But who the authors were is altogether unknown, except that they must have been, for the most part, monks. Nothing is told us in the Chronicle itself of its authorship; nor is there any collateral evidence to throw light upon this subject. There are some peculiarities in the case which, at the same time, provoke and balk our curiosity. Differing manuscripts are found in 'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, according to the several original authorities, edited with a translation by Benjamin Thorpe, member of the Royal Society at Munich, &c. &c. Published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.' separate monasteries, and yet it is held indisputable that these several manuscripts, whether West-Saxon or Mercian, are derived from a common original. Who issued this original to the several monasteries by whom it was copied with alterations or additions? or is the similarity between the manuscripts to be accounted for by some comparison, at stated times, of independent records, and a reduction of them to one standard? Such a process as this, it is suggested, might have taken place where the several monasteries were really each keeping a record of contemporaneous events. It is a mere conjecture; and the earlier part of the Chronicle is evidently not a contemporaneous re cord. The materials of this portion are traced to Eusebius and some other ecclesiastical histories. Might not some safe inference be drawn from the language of the Chronicle This, it is reasonable to suppose, must have undergone some changes during the two centuries from the time of Alfred to the death of Harold. Yet Mr Thorpe assures us that the language is the same throughout, both in its vocabulary and its inflexions. Not until some time after the Conquest do we observe any material corruptions they then begin to be manifest. If, now, one should be tempted immediately to frame a theory, that the whole of the Saxon Chronicle (so far as it relates to Saxon times) was written, or re-written, about the time of the Conquest-(older materials being worked up at this rifacciamento) a host of objections would start to view, and we should have still more difficulty than ever in acounting for the variations of the several manuscripts. Chronicle in its present form in the days of King Alfred, is the circumstance that his friend Asser, Bishop of Sherborne, translates and incorporates much of its matter in his Latin life of his royal patron, from the year 849 to 887." Indeed, of the conjectures that have been thrown out, that which wears the air of greatest probability, is that the Chronicle owes its origin to Alfred; that he, or some one prompted by him, composed the earlier portions; and that he gave injunctions for its continuance. It has been noticed that a more copious narrative commences from the year 853, or soon after Alfred's birth; and also, that the account of the acts of that prince is, in all the manuscripts with one exception, strikingly similar, while on other occasions they frequently deviate from each other. It will illustrate, however, the obscurity which attends on all the species of historical criticism, if we remark, that in a case where we find a similar passage in a Latin and a Saxon book, it may be extremely difficult to decide which was the original and which the translation. We have seen that Mr Thorpe speaks unhesitatingly of Asser translating into his biography of Alfred passages from the Saxon Chronicle. Lappenberg, on the contrary, speaks just as confidently of "extracts from Asser's 'Life of Alfred' being transferred with a few variations into the Chronicle." This historian is inclined to believe that the whole body of the Chronicle, or at least a large portion of it, was originally composed in Latin, the language of the Church, and afterwards translated into Anglo-Saxon. If we It is certain that some Saxon suppose that the translation was Chronicle existed from an early executed at a much later period time. Alfred deposited a copy of than the earlier portions were a Chronicle at Winchester, where written, this would account for the it was fastened by a chain, so that fact already mentioned, that the all who wished might read. Mr Saxon language employed bears no Thorpe adds-"A further corro- trace of variety of epoch. boration of the existence of the Turning from the question of |