wrapped around it, and the germ of his being was about to assert itself. I have seldom indeed seen Percivale look so pleased. "Do me a dozen as good as that," he said, "and I'll have the proofs framed in silver gilt." It _has_ been done; but the proofs had to wait longer for the frame than Percivale for the proofs. But he need have held out no such bribe of brotherly love, for there was another love already at work in himself more than sufficing to the affair. But I check myself: who shall say what love is sufficing for this or for that? Who, with the most enduring and most passionate love his heart can hold, will venture to say that he could have done without the love of a brother? Who will say that he could have done without the love of the dog whose bones have lain mouldering in his garden for twenty years? It is enough to say that there was a more engrossing, a more marvellous love at work. Roger always, however, took a half-holiday on Saturdays, and now generally came to us. On one of these occasions I said to him,-- "Wouldn't you like to come and hear Marion play to her friends this evening, Roger?" "Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he answered; and we went. It was delightful. In my opinion Marion is a real artist. I do not claim for her the higher art of origination, though I could claim for her a much higher faculty than the artistic itself. I suspect, for instance, that Moses was a greater man than the writer of the Book of Job, notwithstanding that the poet moves me so much more than the divine politician. Marion combined in a wonderful way the critical faculty with the artistic; which two, however much of the one may be found without the other, are mutually essential to the perfection of each. While she uttered from herself, she heard with her audience; while she played and sung with her own fingers and mouth, she at the same time listened with their ears, knowing what they must feel, as well as what she meant to utter. And hence it was, I think, that she came into such vital contact with them, even through her piano. As we returned home, Roger said, after some remark of mine of a cognate sort,-- "Does she never try to teach them any thing, Ethel?" "She is constantly teaching them, whether she tries or not," I answered. "If you can make any one believe that there is something somewhere to be trusted, is not that the best lesson you can give him? That can be taught only by being such that people cannot but trust you." "I didn't need to be told that," he answered. "What I want to know is, whether or not she ever teaches them by word of mouth,--an ordinary and inferior mode, if you will." "If you had ever heard her, you would not call hers an ordinary or inferior mode," I returned. "Her teaching is the outcome of her life, the blossom of her being, and therefore has the whole force of her living truth to back it." "Have I offended you, Ethel?" he asked.