Jane must be an actress still: the voice that speaks is Mrs. Smith's"A cousin, Mim, had the rheumatic fever as bad as you, and lived years after, and never got the use of her limbs, and weak-like in her intellick.' Theobald, if I recover, I hope I shan't be 'weak-like in my intellick ?" "

"Don't jest, Jane-don't jest; I can't bear to hear it.”

He lays her tenderly down upon her pillow, rests his face by hers, and soon Jane feels tears that are not her own upon her cheek.

I have never depicted Francis Theobald in any favourable light. I have shown him to be weak, selfish, indolent; a gambler; not too exemplary a husband-not up to the mark, it may be, if judged only by the world's code of honour. Yet even in this man there must be good. Even Francis Theobald cannot, surely, be all scum, all froth, inasmuch as he can love and suffer yet!

And make no mistake as to his position. Do not think that Theobald holds Jane to his heart, sorrows over her as a man without hope, "not knowing." Theobald knows all-knows the whole story of Jane's meditated sin against him, painted, in colours black as night, by Jane herself. During the wild days and nights of her fever, her delirious ramblings (scarce a sentence of which but contained his name and Lady Rose's) told him much. With her first return to reason, with the first coherent words she uttered, he knew all. Truth is strong in her as love; looking with her wan eyes into his eyes, both were poured forth to him together. And his answer was—to take her closer than before to his breast, and forgive her. Not altogether what a man of stoic principles would have done, thus placed. But Francis Theobald, we have long known, has no principles worth speaking of. At all events he forgave her. And with this crowning weakness of his weak unballasted life I, for one, am not disposed to quarrel. "Theobald," says she, softly, after awhile. "There's just one thing I want to talk to you about. I should like to have it out to-night." "Not to-night, Jenny; to-morrow you will be stronger. You know what the doctors say about your being excited towards evening."

"I know. Madame is apt to get excited towards evening,' say you, solemnly. Then take the greatest care madame does not get excited towards evening,' answer the doctors, more solemnly still. However, what I'm going to talk about won't excite me a bit. Theobald," holding his hand between both her own, and looking at him, fixedly, "I don't want to die!"

Francis Theobald's glass goes to his eye. "There's deuced little in this world for any one to want to live for," he remarks, drearily.

"If I was sure-certain-that my death wouldn't be for the best . . But of course it would set you free . . . and then if ever she gets free, as I dare say people like that can, and

"What are you talking of, my poor child ?" says Theobald, as Jane

falters-falters, but holds his hand tighter and tighter between her "If ever she gets free!' Whom do you mean by 'she'?"

own.

"I mean Lady Rose," cries Jane, with a gasp. "Now that I've had courage to say it, I shall be better. Theobald, some day when,-when all this is over, and when Mr. Golightly is got rid of, you will marry her!"

"If Mr. Golightly were got rid of," says Theobald, speaking more in his natural voice than he has spoken for days, "and if Lady Rose had a hundred thousand pounds, and I might marry her next moment, I would not marry her! I would rather break stones on the road than spend my life with Lady Rose."

"And yet

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Jenny, let us have no more 'and yets.' Haven't we agreed that the past is done with? We are to go back to the old vagabond days, Jane, you and I. I mean to sell Theobalds: I mean that Chalkshire and everything belonging to Chalkshire shall be as though they had never been."

For a minute she is silent. Then a light, that makes her look almost like the Jane Theobald she once was, trembles over all her worn white face.

"The old vagabond days-you and me alone, again? Theobald, never mind the doctors! I can't die. I don't think I'm a coward. As long as I could hold your hand, I'd go anywhere, in this world or the next. . . . That wouldn't be death! But not alone. . . Oh, my dear, put your arms round me-close. Love me, and I shall live. Love me, Theobald, me alone in the whole world, and I shall cheat the doctors yet!"

And she kept her word, Reader; she lives. The men of science found another many-syllabled Latin word for the cause of her miraculous recovery. I think, myself, the four letters L. O. V. E. spell it in simple English. Houseless, vagabond, "unvisited" Jane lives, and is a supremely happy woman at this hour!

THE END.

Politeness.

Ir may seem strange in this age of progress to write on so old-fashioned a theme as Politeness. But as old fashions are reappearing for the adornment of the body, we may, perhaps, tolerate a few for the embellishment of the mind and manners. We have Louis Quatorze high heels and buckles, Watteau bodices, Marie Antoinette hats, Dolly Varden caps and chintzes. Why should we not have the preux chevalier politesse, the Sydney refinement, the Bayard courtesy, the Grandison politeness-chivalrous manners, in short, with the somewhat chevaleresque costume? Reaction is ever succeeding action. The ornate counteracts the plain, the smooth the rough, the luxurious the homely, and vice versa. Thus manners, like everything else, change, and the novelties of one age are generally a reaction on the preceding.

The nineteenth century is, doubtless, the foremost of centuries, not only in years, but wisdom. Still, in the wear and tear of hard work, he has rubbed off a portion of his polish. We all know that polish needs renewing. Our mahogany gets dull, our oak and walnut discoloured. So with our manners. We must polish them up occasionally. The friction of this laborious world, while it "rubs off the rust," carries away the polish also; and, unfortunately, moments are so precious that we have no time to lay it on again: there is too much hurry and bustle even to think about it. "Repose" is a word of the past. Politeness in a crowd, in the Houses of Parliament, in the courts of justice, in a railway carriage, on the exchange or mart, in the street, would be as misplaced as perfume on the troubled waves of ocean. There is no time for it. Like "repose," it is a word of the past. The American poet's advice,

"Keep pushing, 'tis wiser than standing aside,"

has steamed across the Atlantic, and forced its way amongst us British, causing us to cast off some of the wearisome restraints of good manners. Our inclination is to rush through life, bent on our own affairs; and in so doing we hustle others, and are hustled in return, and thus the polish wears off.

Being rubbed away in public, we are not always prepared with a fresh store for private life. The manners that are rough-coated and sharp-edged in the world are rarely smooth and rounded in the family. The young people who accustom themselves to the graceful language elegantly defined as "slang," or deport themselves in the

novel mode choicely denominated "fast," find it difficult to resume their mother tongue and less familiar tone in the presence of their elders or betters; indeed, scarcely make an effort to resume it. Reverence is likely to become another substantive of the past.

The old proverbs that met us in our copy-books in days when proverbial philosophy was in vogue are not altogether out of place now. "Familiarity breeds contempt," and "Manners make the man." Assuredly the highly familiar conversation we hear does not appear to nourish respect; for children are often scarcely polite to their parents, husbands to their wives, or, consequently, servants to their employers. In manners, as in dress, the lower classes imperceptibly imitate their betters. We do not, certainly, wish to return to the days when children dared not sit in presence of their parents, and kissed the tips of their fingers, or even to the time when a Miss Burney stood till she fainted when in attendance on our excellent Queen Charlotte; but we do not desire so complete a reaction as we have obtained. Parents might inculcate and demand politeness, at least, as the garnishment of that "freedom" which their children consider as the "height of good manners;" and masters, mistresses, and servants might give and take a little of the small coin of courtesy. But somebody exclaims,

"A man's a man for a' that!"

So is a rough diamond a diamond; but it is, after all, the manners that give ease to the man-the polish that yields lustre to the dia mond; and as refinement fits the one for good society, so the lapidary prepares the other for a queen's coronet.

In nothing is the decay of politeness more remarkable than in the relations between the sexes. Men and women are antagonistic as well as familiar. We will start no vexed questions to account for this antagonism, but suggest that it must be in some sort the result of steam and smoke, since it began with the railways. In olden timesnot so very old, either-when stage-coaches were our best and readiest means of travelling, women commanded the care and attention of the gallant. In case of rain, gentlemen relinquished their comfortable inside places, and mounted to the roof in favour of the ladies. Coats, cloaks, umbrellas-every available convenience was at their service. They were waited upon at inns, handed in and out of the coach, assisted with their luggage-taken care of, in short. Now the sight of a woman in a railway carriage sends the knight farther. He rushes from compartment to compartment until the obnoxious flowers or feathers that alarmed him are absent, and he gains that luxurious divan appropriated to the stronger sex, and called "a smoking carriage." If the warning whistle precipitate him into the company of the fair sex, he leaves it as quickly as he can, and does not tarry to

VOL. XXXIV.

G

offer a hand or protect a bandbox. It is just possible that those ladies who have taken to cigarettes may find more favour with the wary masculine traveller.

The urbanities of domestic life and the civilities of society are equally lost in smoke. Men herd together in clubs, where the pipe, emblem of low life in the last generation, is the calumet of peace of this. Women who unaffectedly dislike the odour of tobacco, need not expect to be liked by the men. They are simply bores. Thus, if men prefer clubs to drawing-rooms, and pipes to ladies, women, asserting their rights in turn, form separate societies. They have their clubs, reading-rooms, meetings, and interests apart. They become what is called "strong-minded," and the other sex, who "make chimneys of their noses," as James the First not inaptly said, puff out ridicule instead of puffing out politeness.

We hear that Elder Frederick has come over from his American Mount Lebanon, to endeavour to make of England a nation of Shakers, and so to bring the world to a peaceful and gradual end. He will find a field prepared for him. He has but to preach. Let the sexes maintain their clubs, and they will dwell apart as effectually as they do in his more pastoral settlement, although it will still require time to convince them that his doctrine of equality is the primal law divine.

As a system of politeness is said to be established in Mount Lebanon, so in our hemisphere politeness has been known to escape from the great world, and take refuge in the mountains. Your peasant

is sometimes gifted with a politeness that would put your fine gentleman to shame. It is not servile, for he can be proud and independent enough, but it is agreeable. The touch of the hat, the curtsey, the good morning, the friendly smile, the homely welcome, the kindly inquiry, not only evince politeness, but tend "to make the whole world kin." This is innate, not only in some individuals, but in some families. We have known a family of Welsh mountain colliers so celebrated for it as to be called the "civil family," the word "civil" meaning civilised, much as polite was originally used to distinguish the citizen from the boor. People wondered why this country-bred family should be so well-mannered, both in public and private life, above and below ground. They were illiterate, without social advantages, and bred in poverty and sickness. The father was a confirmed invalid, the mother laboured like a man, the children, who were all boys, were sent to the mines of Bryncoch almost as soon as they could walk steadily, and use their little hands. Their only chance of education was a Sunday-school, provided for the colliers, adult and juvenile, by a kindly lady of the neighbourhood. In this lay the answer to the question, "Why are they all so civil ?" They followed the teaching of the kindly lady and her daughters, and learnt their politeness from the Sacred Word.

One little anecdote, recorded of one of the boys of this "civil"