man, with a square head and a stolid expression of countenance, which might lead the unwary to think him a stupid. Any speculator who invested in Dan as a stupid would make a bad transaction. Dan is Jack (and master) of all trades, and a philosopher to boot. "Is"! I first knew him when I was a boy-no matter how many years agoHe was factotum to the father of a schoolfellow whom I "knew at home," and Dan was no chicken then. He may have gone to the land of the hereafter. At any rate, as I write of the past I had better substitute" was " for "is."

As a collector and adaptor of things I never knew Dan's equal. His "shop," as he called it, a den he built for himself, leading out of the harness-room, was a sight to see. Take a carpenter's, a chemist's, a blacksmith's, a cobbler's, and a marine-store dealer's shop. Mix well together; shuffle and cut; throw in a few books, garnish with diagrams in chalk, and plates out of the Illustrated London News, and you may faintly realise Dan's surroundings. His speciality was making things out of something else, and always having that something else handy in his store. The heaps of apparent rubbish he kept and added to day by day were appalling! The wildest conjecture could not anticipate an use for one article out of a hundred; but the time would surely come when something would get out of order, or be broken, or lost, or what not; and then Dan would scratch his square head, look intensely stupid for a minute or two, and then march straight for his "shop," saying that he thought he had "summut as 'ud do;" and "do" it did.

A little stream ran at the bottom of the garden. Out of a sherry cask Dan made a water-wheel; with an old gun and some straightened horse-shoes he made a pump which it worked. He pieced together a lot of old lead piping, and not only sent water up into the house, but made a fountain on the lawn! He constructed a sun-dial out of a broken pillar and an old copper stew-pan. He mended the church clock with Heaven knows what heterodox material. The harness never wore out. The gig was always spick and span. His employer did not know what a carpenter's bill was. The cows, the pigs, and the poultry throve and multiplied. He was the "vet" of three parishes, which accounts for the rows of bottles and the unholy apparatus which, with a stuffed owl and sundry dried skins of vermin, gave a cabalistic character to his den.

His den was Dan's pride. His confidence in its resources was unlimited. He scorned new materials. In his spare time he would straighten out old nails, re-turn old screws-" get things handy," as he said-smoking his pipe gravely the while, and coming out now and then with those observations which entitled him to consideration as a philosopher, but are out of place here.

I fear that the race of handy men, like Dan, is well nigh extinct.

He was "odd boy" about the place when my friend's father married. He had been in that service twenty-five years when I first met him. The idea of going away to "better himself" was, I believe, the only one that did not enter Dan's angular cranium. He was not perfect. I regret to say that once in a while he got exceedingly drunk. His master was rather a quick-tempered man, and time after time discharged him on the spot-but he never went.

Where are you now, oh, ambidexterous Dan? Is that honest clever right hand of yours with the dust, or is it still busy amongst your things? Ah, no! How time flies! Twelve years ago I met the "little Milly" of the days I write of, a grown-up young lady. The three gallant soldier boys, her brothers, are all gone. Has the grim Reaper spared you, Dan? Anyhow you are too old to work, and the amazing problem-what has become of your things-is too maddening to be entertained.

A. DE F.

Four Sonnets.

I.

THE MINSTREL OF MANKIND.

To sound the true philosophy of things;
To find resemblances where none appear;
To learn the free and facile use of wings;
To bring at will remotest objects near;
To be at once a chronicler and seer;
To thrill creation's harp, and from its strings
Draw ever-varying music sweet and clear;
To live aloft in wild imaginings;

To follow no man on a beaten way,

But in new spheres of thought new language find, While beauteous images incessant play

Upon the polished facets of the mind;

This is to be no songster of to-day;

This is to be the minstrel of mankind.

II.

WINTER AT MENTONE.

COME, let us sit beside the twisted boles
Of olives alway green, by scarps defended,

Absorb the partial summer in our souls

And dream the reign of ice and mistral ended,

And mark the torrent's foam and sunshine blended,

And citron slopes all golden meet the shoals

O'er which the heaving sapphire sea, extended

Into a cove of palm and aloes, rolls.

Talk not of winter while the labiate flowers
Breathe choicest odours from vermilion lips,
And villas hide themselves in leafy bowers,
Nor any clouds the faithful sun eclipse,

Nor changing climate comes with changing hours,
Nor biting frost the orange-blossom nips.

III.

THE POET..

WHEN nature writes in cipher you can read
Her mystic sense, which pedants fail to see.
You pierce the heart of system, fact and creed,
And steep in your own hues all things that be,
Yet to yourself remain a mystery;
Doubled in all, and anxious beyond need-

All eye, all ear, all brain, all sympathy-
With food sublime your cravings vast you feed.
Oh feeble, fragile thing, so full of power!

Who gave you over men that lofty seat?
Who fired your lips with that surprising dower
Of uttering things so grand, so true, so sweet?
A life and more you live in every hour,

And with immortal throbs your pulses beat.

IV.

WINGED SEEDS.

WAFT them, ye breezes, on from mind to mind,
And whirl the bristly pappus high in air,
And let each tender seed prolific find

A welcome nook, a mould congenial, where
It may develop its corolla fair,

Dispread its calyx, and against rude wind
Erect a firm stem, and the softest hair
Upon its surface fearlessly unbind :-
If any latent beauty in the germ

Be casket of a truth more precious far,

་

I charge you guard that beauty from the worm,
And for the truth a way to light unbar;
And all the seedling's innate force comfirm

In souls which like well-watered gardens are.

J. C. EARLE.

The Wooing O't.

A NOVEL.

CHAPTER XXX.

EASTNOR was at once old and new. It occupied two sides of a craggy angle, hardly high enough to be dignified with the name of cliff. Beneath the eastern and loftier portion nestled an irregular village of fishermen's cottages, with picturesque red-tiled roofs, interspersed with a few better but very old-fashioned houses, which was all of accommodation the place could boast for strangers, eight or ten years previously. However, a rich railway magnate had by some curious involvement of circumstances become the possessor of a stretch of sandy common which sloped to the sea on the western. side, and here he erected a Royal Esplanade, a Royal Hotel of massive design, after Pugin (a long way), and a garden, with an erection like a gigantic umbrella for the accommodation of a German band, which was intermittent in its attendance, owing to the uncertain nature of the subsidies.

Thus old and new Eastnor turned their backs on each other. For some occult reason Cockneys had not yet found out the place, but the dowager Duchess of St. Perigord, who was very much out of health and depressed" derangement of the nervous system," said Sir Saville Row-really a severe course of breakfasts, luncheons, dinners and suppers, and a little two free an application of phlebotomy to her pocket by an ill-judged purchase of railway shares under the direction of the above-mentioned magnate-the Duchess, we say, was induced, by the loan, rent-free, of a house on the Esplanade, to try the restorative breezes of Eastnor. It was during her stay there that the remarkable recovery in the Wessex and East Anglia scrip took place, which saved more firms from smashing than was generally known. Her Grace consequently returned to town in high health and spirits, quite eloquent as to the life-giving nature of Eastnor air, about the capital fish to be had for a mere song, the delightful fishing boats, and the primitive charm of old Eastnor. Every one in her Grace's set was talked to, and a very fair reputation established for Eastnor. Still it did not make rapid progress, and was still sufficiently free from vulgar notoriety to be somewhat attractive on that score.

When Maggie and Lady Dormer arrived they found the judicious Johnson had engaged the very corner house indicated by Mrs. Berry.