whom I profess love and constancy? Stand and
see you swindled into poverty? No: I'll be
damn'd if I do. Of what do you think I am
made? My stomach rises against it, my blood
boils against it, my flesh creeps at it, my soul
loathes it:' then after this great burst he seemed
to turn so feeble: 'oh,' said he, faltering, 'I
know what I have done; I have signed the death
warrant of our love, dear to me as life. But I
can't help it. Oh, Julia, Julia, my lost love,
you can never look on me again; you must not
love a man you cannot marry, Cheat Hardie's
wretched son. But what could I do? Fate
offers me but the miserable choice of desolation
or cowardly rascality. I choose desolation. And
I mean to stand by my choice like a man. So
good-by, ladies.'

The poor proud creature rose from his seat,
and bowed stiffly and haughtily to us both, and
was going away without another word, and, I do
believe, for ever. But his soul had been too
great for his body; his poor lips turned pale,
and he staggered; and would have fallen, but
mamma screamed to me, and she he loves so
dearly, and abandons so cruelly, woke from a
stupor of despair, and flew and caught him fainting
in these arms."

WARLIKE WIMBLEDON.

HE was a discontented man, the omnibus-
driver, and he said generally that he didn't like
it. Wollunteers might be good, he said, and
they mightn't, leastways what noise they made
frightening horses, with bangin' bands and
such like, wasn't much 'count: lawyers they
was, and clurks, and ribbing-coves (understood
by present writer to be drapers' assistants), and
such like. Rifle-matches, ah! well, he'd heard
tell, but hadn't seen much of that game, further
than the Red House at Battersea, and for nuts
at Greenwich Fair. If they was any good—
as men—do you see? they'd come up to
Copenhagen House, or the Brecknock, at Easter
Monday, and have a back-fall with those parties
that came up from Devonshire and the North.
Wollunteers! he thought he knew a young man
in the public line not far from Tottenham, which
—he was all fair and 'boveboard—which it was
at Wood Green, his name being Obble, what
could show them Wollunteers something at knurr
and spell, let 'em come with their fur caps, and
all their fandangoes! Here he grew defiant, and
elbowed me fiercely with his whip arm. The
whole affair was bellicose. I was on a Waterloo
omnibus going to the Waterloo station, on my
way to Wimbledon, then under martial law, and
seeing that the taint had got into the driver's
blood, and fearing lest he should kick me
with his Bluchers, I remained silent, and never
opened my mouth until I asked for my railway
ticket.

But when I had curled into my corner in the
railway carriage, and had taken stock of the
arms, accoutrements, and general appearance of
the three privates and the ensign who went down
with me, and had weaned my ears from drinking
in the pompous rhetoric of the other occupant
of our compartment, a gentleman of very imposing
appearance, to whom, according to his own
account, Wimbledon was indebted for its tenure
of existence, I began to ponder over the
omnibus-driver's remarks; and his reminiscences of
Battersea Red House, and the nuts at Greenwich
Fair, reminded me of what my idea of a
rifle-match was, as embodied in the last one in
which I took part. Sixteen years, I thought,
have passed since I went down, rifle in hand, to
a long strip of meadow bordering the Rhine,
and paid my money to become a competitor at
the Düsselberg Schützen Fest. A pretty quiet
spot, flanked on one side by other meadows
filled with large-uddered, mild-eyed cows, whose
bells tinkled pleasantly in the ears of the
competitors, and on the other by the rapid rushing
river. There were some half-dozen painted
wooden targets, arranged on the Swiss system,
while a little distance apart, on the top of a high
pole, towered a popinjay, to hit which was the
great event of the day. The spectators of the
friendly contest, varying, according to the time
of day, from one to three hundred, were all
townspeople well known to the marksmen and
to each other, and occupied their time either in
coming to the firing-posts and giving utterly
vague and incoherent advice to their favourites,
or in examining with deep reverence the prizes,
consisting of two silver-mounted biergläser, and
a few electrotyped Maltese crosses bearing the
name of the Schützen Fest and the date, one of
which I saw the other day in a dressing-table
drawer with a few old letters, an odd glove or
two, a hacked razor-strop, a partially obliterated
daguerreotype, and such-like lumber. I don't
think we shot well, I know that an enlightened
public would not have liked our appearance, and
that General Hay would have objected to our
attitudes, which were anything but Hythe
position. I am certain that the merest tyro of a
recruit would have scorned our rifles, which
required several seconds' notice before they went
off, and I have no doubt that we were supremely
ridiculous, but I am equally certain that we were
undeniably happy. The great charm, I thought,
of such a meeting as that which I am recalling
and that to which I am going, is its quiet, the
change from the bustle and roar of ordinary life
to the calm tranquillity, the noiseless serenity
of open country space. If I felt it then, when
merely straying from the monastic seclusion of
my university, how shall I enjoy it now when
flying from the ceaseless hum of London! how
pleasant will be the open heath, dotted here
and there with rifle-ranges and marksmen, the
freedom from bustle and noise, the picturesque
surroundings, the fresh turf, the elastic air,
the——PUTNEY! The voice of the guard
announcing my destination breaks upon my reverie.
I jump out of the carriage, and, ascending
the steps of the station, I emerge.

Into Pandemonium. Into a roaring, raving,
shouting crowd; into a combination of the road