Afterwards, Lilian told how her father had risen in life entirely by his own efforts; whilst her colour deepened with an equally right pride as she added that her mother had been a gentlewoman, to whose foresight her child owed the education that was something better than any her father's money alone could have purchased. As Mrs Tipper had informed me, it had been Mrs Farrar's dying wish that the first fifteen years of her child's life should be spent with an old friend and distant connection of her own. She had not erred in her judgment. Notwithstanding her naturally good disposition, Lilian would have suffered from the disadvantages consequent upon being brought up in luxury, the petted heiress of a wealthy man, instead of spending her early years at a country vicarage in wholesome study and exercise. I could understand now how it happened that Mr Farrar's daughter was so refined and different from what might have been expected. I knew now why it gratified her so much to believe that her lover had not sought her for her money's sake. Any one but herself would have thought it natural enough that she should be sought for her own sake. How true, and good, and sweet she was, and how soon one knew it; there being no mysterious complications in her nature which it would take time to discover. 'To think of our having so dreaded the lady-companion, auntie; and to think of my having pleaded so much with papa against engaging one!' ejaculated Lilian, when, after a very pleasant afternoon, we rose to go to our rooms and dress for dinner. 'We did dread her, did we not, dear?' smilingly returned the old lady, putting her hand upon mine; 'though I had the most cause for dread.' 'Indeed you had not--your cause is mine,' very decidedly said Lilian. That they could say so much before me was sufficient, had I not already arrived at the agreeable conclusion that I had found a home until Philip's return. AUSTRIAN ARCTIC DISCOVERY. At a time when the attention of this country is again being specially directed to the question of Arctic exploration, it becomes interesting to take note of what other nations have recently achieved in the region of Polar discovery. It is not too much to say that it is with justice that England considers herself in the van as yet of Arctic enterprise; but we have little hesitation in affirming that the expedition the story of which is told in the two volumes under notice,[A] is worthy of ranking side by side with the most memorable of our own voyages of discovery; and when it is considered that the attention of Austria has but very recently been turned to the subject of Arctic exploration, the amount of success achieved by that nation is all the more creditable.