flat preface had surely been designed by heaven on purpose to throw up into fuller loveliness this day of days. Had anyone ever been so happy before? with the sun and the sea, and the soft air, and nature, tender mother, all smiling, caressing, helping, as if there was any need to help! as if the chief fact of all was not enough to make the dullest skies and greyest space resplendent. Agnes felt herself the spoiled child of heaven. She looked up into the wonderful blue above, tears coming to her eyes and thanks into her heart. Was it not the hand of God that had turned all her life into joy and brightness--what else? when she had not been serving Him as she ought. But that was heaven’s celestial way; and oh with what fervour of grateful love, with what devotion and tender zeal of thanksgiving would not she serve Him now! ‘Yes!’ she said, when Oswald displayed before her his pictures of happiness, and told where he would take her, how they should live, with what beautiful surroundings, amid what pleasures and sweetness and delight. ‘Yes!’ It was all a dream of impossible blessedness sure to come true; ‘but we must still think of the poor,’ she said, looking at him with those sweetest tears in her eyes. He called her all kinds of heavenly names in the admiration of his young love--‘Angel,’ as all lovers call all beloveds; and both of them felt a touch of tender goodness in them in addition to every other blessedness. Yes! they would think of the poor; they would help all who wanted help; they would be tender, very tender, of the unhappy. Were there, indeed, still unhappy people in the world? with what awe of reverent pity these two thought of them, would have succoured them, served them on their knees! This thought served to give a kind of consecration to their own height of visionary joy. And yet there was one little thing that disturbed them both, which was no less and no more than the cap and poke bonnet which Agnes wore. She took them off as they floated along, and threw a white handkerchief over her head, which made her look more like a Perugino than ever; and then Oswald produced out of his pocket a letter-case which he was in the habit of carrying about with him, full of verses and scraps of composition, and read to her the lines which he had gone over so often: From old Pietro’s canvas freshly sprung Fair face!