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Susan in particular, and that you will be much the better of being snubbed yourself in return-the motive is plain.

If you acknowledge the parallel, and as you are candid and ingenuous, I think you will acknowledge it, as it is thus pointed out to you, even though, like all caricatures of ourselves, it pique, mortify, as well as enlighten you--what are you to do?

The same in both cases. Be as little conscious as possible of what we are apt to overrate, accidents of fortune, surface disparities-however startling or repellant. Let fall the accessories, drop them out of sight, aim with all your might at seeing the veritable man or woman, believe always there is a man-a woman, human, immortal, fit to touch you with tenderness, to impress you with reverence, to be seen. Rise above what is unpleasant, even nasty, in effect, when people have no intention of being either the one or the other. You ought to deal gently with your neighbours, if you are gentle yourself, to show your higher nurture, by bearing with ignorances and infirmities, as well as amending them, supposing they are susceptible of amendment. Should you take the right way with those who are only gross from inadvertence and habit, you may meet with success as well as gratitude for your pains. But remember, a young Christian lady wages war with all that is unseemly, not because it is disagreeable to herself, but because it is opposed to purity and delicacy.

And, Mary, trust me, there is a special call for you to show consideration to the Crums. You must reflect that at any time that Maud and Maurice Fuller were, out of the common, careful of your feelings, attentive to your interests-their consideration warmed and filled your heart. You were ready to say to yourself, "How forbearing it was in Maud, how mindful in Maurice; I will not forget it." The reason was, that affect to despise, and in reality, exaggerate the power of wealth and rank as we may, we are conscious that it is a power, and we mostly long to possess it. There is something gracious, therefore, in one of the happy few stooping assiduously and in defiance of every rebuff, to raise and to sustain the scantily endowed-in the fortunate in this world being incapable of forgetting, or deserting the unfortunate. There is a text in Proverbs-that in prosperity we should rejoice, but in adversity we should consider. It records the limited, somewhat worldly, so to speak, wisdom of Proverbs. The spirit of the New Testament transposes the verse, and urges-that in prosperity we should consider. The Lord, who left it as His last commandment, that we should love one another to death, gave out the noblest essence of "noblesse oblige," when He said, "And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."

CHAPTER X.

OLD AND NEW FRIENDS.

Early Friendships-Old Friends-The Hoares-New Friends -the Dewes-Rival Claims of both-A Fascinating Companion.

Go

O to the Sloe Den, child, to-day?" No. Every thing in its season. Dens are for spring ;-it When you visited the Sloe Den

is autumn now.

before, it was in the month of April. Banks and hollows were sweet, bright, and gay with budding boughs, blossoming, star-like primroses, gem-like blue and purple hyacinths, and orchises, and little birds swelling their throats and sounding their pipes on every twig, in every brake. Now the water is swollen with the Lammas floods, the red clay soil is moist and slippery, the rank vegetation is in an advanced stage of decay, in dens more than anywhere else, "sere, sere in autumn the bracken grows; the little birds are silent, and the whole place smells mouldy."

Yes, the Den would sadden you to-day; the moor is

for autumn, the bare, bleak moor, fresh and faithful, making no lavish promise in spring, and as steady in moderate fulfilment as ever in autumn, only crowned with the September glory of the heather, like a good man finishing a hard, lofty, self-denying life in a clear, crimson sunset of peace and prosperity, for at evening time there is light. When the roses of the garden are shed, when the russet sheaves of the valley are garnered, the moor, old friend, is always the same always the same, like the everlasting hills for all ages and generations. Cities may be built or razed to the foundation stones-the roar of traffic may sound where the shy martlet skimmed the lonely stream, and built its nest on the beetling crag; or desolation may have succeeded to the triumph of man's industry-fens may be drained, or old pleasances laid waste; but Drummossie Moor lies bald and wild in the blaze of the sun or the blast of the storm, as when strewn with red coats and with tartan plaids, like leaves in the Fall; the moors of Devonshire wear the very look to us which they wore to Dutch William and his Whigs after they showed their plumed hats and great sword knots at Torbay; the Yorkshire moors stretch "over the hills, and far away" in barrenness and freedom, as in the days when the stern Roundhead, and the roystering Cavalier in buff coat and with trailing pike, made them their drill ground; or in the more dis

tant days, when Guy Neville, in silk doublet and gilt armour, rallied the merry men of the North Countrie around the standard with the bear and the ragged staff

-now for the white rose of York, now for the red rose of Lancaster. Always the same, when all things else are changed or changing, the moor is only more elastic to the tread, more bracing in its air, more full of beauty in the mists of its mornings, the glad stillness of its noons, the reflected glow of its evenings, when the dens are drooping on every side, hectic and wan in every tint, like lush, extravagant, facile, sentimental natures, with no cheer in them except here and there the coral berries of the mountain ash, the ruby haws of the thorn, the orange hips of the dog rose, and here and there a brave Robin, not to be daunted by the muteness of song, not to be dismayed by the approach of the mud and the frost of winter, trilling his honest, confiding, contented lay to the last.

Primitive affections and simple neighbourliness are also made to last. Everything in its season, and old and new friends in theirs. The new for the young and hopeful, as the budding dens for spring; the old for the middle-aged-those who have lived and loved, known care, trial, disappointment, sorrow, change, to whom "The tender grace of a day that is dead"

will never come back in this world, as the bare moor for autumn.

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