In his case, (for the man is very generous,) more than in all others, a soft answer turneth away wrath. Take his lectures in good part. Their manner may be in fault, but their matter is generally worth attending to; it is the expression of a high, pure, delicate standard, held by one who has your interest almost feverishly at heart. Conform to his lectures if you can; he will be wonderfully touched by your faith in him, your tacit acknowledgment of him in the light of a leader, guide, and true elder brother. He will be grateful to you for smoothing his ruffled moods. He will incline to you in his gratitude, as he inclines to Bob. With all your points of resemblance, there is the same attraction of reverses between the two; there was the same, with its strength only partially fathomed or suspected, between your grandfather and his father; there is the same, though the particular relationship offers an opposition to its exercise, between his own father and him.

You may have it in your power to save Philip from himself, as Bob has it in his power to save him. And though it is true that Philip's gift of reading men's hearts and souls, and hearing the deeper symphonies of nature, may be a higher, rarer gift, than the gifts with which Bob and you are endowed, still it is for Philip's healthier life, the preservation of all that is best and truest in him, to be won from himself to common charities and common joys, and to the

common world of sense, as long as he is in the body, to learn to love things, not for the purpose of dissecting them and brooding over them for things of finer significance, but as Bob and you love them unquestioningly, without a reason, in happy child-like freedom. Philip will learn, because a man like him has great aptitude for learning, and it is a mighty relief to men like him when they can shut the eyes of the spirit, and train the bodily eyes to look abroad with simple, hearty relish. It will be like a new sense to Philip -the recovery of the use of his plain, single senses, another cause of gratitude to you, a growing motive for finding you congenial company, until the fibres of that heart, somewhat jealous and close-shut, but when once it opens to an individual, opening for ever, with tendrils which cling with a tenacity that no other fidelity resembles, twine round you, and you find one day that you and gruff Philip (dear, noble-hearted, self-forgetful, cherishing Philip, he will be then) have grown together like the vine and the oak, so that no earthly power can rend you asunder, and you are so confident in, so satisfied with your support, that even Bob could not take his place in your estimation; even Bob would seem too easily swayed, beside that pillar of strength.

CHAPTER VI.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS―(continued.)

The Brothers-Bob-Hal-The too-useful Sister-Family Courtesy-the Family Gathering.

B

to

UT at present, Mary, it is more natural for you prefer Bob. Every one loves Bob, as every one loved his father. There is a sweetness and gentleness about Bob, under the simple coating of his manliness, and surface roughness; for on the surface Bob is a great deal rougher than Philip, which shines through his very personal characteristics. That tall, broadshouldered fellow (Bob is the big man among you) has a motion and a touch as light as a woman's when occasion calls for it, and that thin, brown, bearded face of his, in the lines of the mouth, and the language of the eyes, is frank and kind as a child's, impulsive too as a child's, but that only clinches the favour in which he is held by father and mother, brother and sister, maid and man, child and graybeard, beast and bird. He had a tame hawk once which slept on the canopy of his bed every night, after

it had come and tapped at his window-pane, and been taken into his room, (you, and all his child-acquaintances must remember "Keerie.") So far from pecking out Bob's eyes, the bird of prey watched him lovingly, unweariedly, with its own bright, unwinking eyes for hours. It may read as a strange fact in natural history, but I can vouch for it as a fact. And the most worldly people, if there is any good in them at all, feel a kindness for the rash man who puts himself without hesitation in their power, such as the wild bird had for the peaceful sleeper.

He is a handsome fellow. Bob is like you, Mary, only a great deal handsomer, because, as I have said, your style becomes a man better than a woman.

At present, my dear, you see no bounds to your fondness for Bob-no chance of your disagreeing with and offending him. Yet I am not sure but even now you fail to appreciate him. You may put up your throat, open your eyes, and tell me that I am mistaken as indignantly as you please, only listen to me.

Bob is so simple and docile, save when his blood boils at injustice, cruelty, or treachery, or when his heart is wrung by unkindness, that you are in danger of forgetting his gifts. Bob did not make any great figure at school or college, as Philip did. Application is rather Bob's weak point; the world is full of innocent, pleasant distractions for him; and he is not very

ambitious, in a worldly sense.

in his affections.

Bob is only never fickle

Yet few men can beat him in "the

He is a

fairy tales of science," and in natural history. He has not Philip's love of riding, of sports and games, with their dim reflection of dramatic action and the play of men's passions-not even of shooting and fishing, these frequent excuses of the naturalist; yet is Bob at the human antipodes from indolence, listlessness, vacuity. He knows every cloud in the sky, every shadow on the earth, every leaf on the tree, every bird in the air, as the face of a familiar friend—not for any secret which they tell to him alone, but for their homely, mother-tongue. He takes to the cultivation and rearing of plants and animals very kindly. born husbandman, gardener, and dealer in useful and ornamental, animated and inanimate stock. His room is a queer, exhaustless cabinet, quarry, farm, garden, menagerie-a paradise to children, and wonderfully delightful to older children, and only a little distressing to housemaids. He will walk for a score of miles, and he is a super-excellent pedestrian, as good and untiring a walker as Philip is a rider, more than content to be alone, so far as humanity is concerned, in the animal, vegetable, mineral creation-he who is the man of many friends of his kind, and greatly beloved by his friends. He will sit down to look at and listen to the black-and-white winged, yellow-breasted