so good a city? Against whom do ye will to fight? Against your brethren? What victory will ye gain?--none other than weeping!" The words fell on deaf ears, and the smoke of burning streets, slaughter, and exile forced Dino to look to the stranger. There is something strangely touching in the dry, passionless way in which he tracks Henry of Luxemburg from city to city, the fire of his real longing only breaking out here and there in pettish outbursts at each obstacle the Emperor finds. The weary waiting came to nothing. Dino leaves us still looking for Henry's coming; Dante tells us of the death that dashed all hope to the ground. Even in the hour of his despair the poet could console himself by setting his "divino Arrigo" in the regions of the blest. What comfort the humble chronicler found whose work we have been studying none can know. BUTTERCUPS. It is not the least debt we owe to the holidays that they give us our buttercups back again. Few faces have stirred us with a keener touch of pity through the whole of the season than the face of the pale, awkward girl who slips by us now and then on the stairs, a face mutinous in revolt against its imprisonment in brick and mortar, dull with the boredom of the schoolroom, weary of the formal walk, the monotonous drive, the inevitable practice on that hated piano, the perpetual round of lessons from the odd creatures who leave their odder umbrellas in the hall. It is amazingly pleasant to meet the same little face on the lawn, and to see it blooming with new life at the touch of freedom and fresh air. It blooms with a sense of individuality, a sense of power. In the town the buttercup was nobody, silent, unnoticed, lost in the bustle and splendour of elder sisterdom. Here among the fields and the hedges she is queen. Her very laugh, the reckless shout that calls for mamma's frown and dooms the governess to a headache, rings out like a claim of possession. Here in her own realm she rushes at once to the front, and if we find ourselves enjoying a scamper over the common or a run down the hill-side, it is the buttercup that leads the way. All the silent defiance of her town bondage vanishes in the chatty familiarities of home. She has a story about the elm and the pond, she knows where Harry landed the trout last year, she is intimate with the keeper, and hints to us his mysterious hopes about the pheasants. She is great in short cuts through the woods, and has made herself wondrous lurking-places which she betrays under solemn promises of secrecy. She is a friend of every dog about the place, and if the pony lies nearest to her heart her lesser affections range over a world of favourites. It is hard to remember the pale, silent, schoolgirl of town in the vivid, chatty little buttercup who hurries one from the parrot to the pigeon, from the stables to the farm, and who knows and describes the merits of every hound in the kennels.