she imitated his mildness and candour, which condemned nothing without fully proving it. At Easter she left St. Petersburg with the Grand Duchess Helena, and visited Moscow, and in June returned to Germany. Her mother met her in Leipzig. The meeting, as may be imagined, was very affecting. After their return to Mon Repos a reaction from the recent excitement and agitation which she had experienced set in, and the Princess Elizabeth was overcome by apathy. Her mother, therefore, gladly consented to her accompanying the Grand Duchess Helena to Ouchy. During the years 1866, 1867, 1868, she paid visits with her aunt or mother to Switzerland, Italy, France, and Sweden, meeting with much to interest her. Little did she think at the end of this time of the career on which she was so soon to enter. She always wished to have “a calling” in life. She did not wish to live a life of pleasure, or the life of an intellectual _dilettante_, but one of real usefulness. She resolved to devote herself to the work of education, and be the teacher of a school. Her mother consented, on the condition that she should go through a regular course of preparatory training for the purpose, and pass an examination. But “man proposes and God disposes.” During the spring of 1869, while she was with her mother in Bonn, they received an invitation from the Prince of Hohenzollern to pay a visit to Düsseldorf. The mother divined the purpose of the proposed visit, but the daughter had no suspicion of it. She was delighted only with the prospect of seeing the Princess of Hohenzollern and Princess Marie, whom she had met in Berlin, and with whom she had corresponded ever since. (_To be concluded._) FOOTNOTES: [1] Aus “Carmen Sylva’s Leben,” von Natalie, Freiin von Stachelberg—(From “Carmen Sylva’s Life,” by Nathalie, Baroness of Stachelberg. Third revised edition. Heidelberg. 1886). THE SHEPHERD’S FAIRY. A PASTORALE. BY DARLEY DALE, Author of “Fair Katherine,” etc. CHAPTER XVI. Leaving the Priory on her right, Fairy went down the street in which stands the pretty old wooden house in which Anne of Cleves is said to have lived, and which goes by her name, from whence she turned up a lane into the High-street, and going to the bottom of the hill on which the High-street is built, she paused at a blacksmith’s shop. The blacksmith was the father of the veterinary whom Fairy was seeking, and both men were standing in the shed, the blacksmith in his apron, with his hammer in his hand, scratching his head, and looking exceedingly puzzled, the veterinary in his shirt-sleeves, which looked like a protest against the heat which streamed from his father’s forge. He, too, looked equally puzzled.