! i ill m HI! II iiil t W «il« Hill I if 1 ' lliil liR ! in II f! I Mil Is'-I iliil :!i lliil: I 11(1 HH ill ■I iiil I iii lilliilltelil Hl|j»!}Hii ;■ :m!!i! ■• l!!l llttHi'll 1 ' , Nihil 111! I IN MEMORIAM Chester Harvey Rowell ZlfrM^ University of California • Berkeley '. -r- ll- *> £ and was long enough to allow of her reaching the truckle-bed and sitting down on it, but not long enough for her to attempt any dangerous climbing. One bright summer's morning Silas had been more engrossed than usual in " setting up" a new piece of work, an occasion on which his scissors were in requi- sition. These scissors, owing to an especial warning of Dolly's, had been kept carefully out of Eppie's reach ; but the click of them had had a peculiar attraction for her ear, and, watching the results of that click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same cause would produce the same effect. Silas had seated him- self in his loom, and the noise of weaving had be- gun; but he had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie's arm was long enough to reach ; and now, like a small mouse, watching her opportunity, she stole quietly from her corner, secured the scissors, and tod- dled to the bed again, setting up her back as a mode of concealing the fact. She had a distinct intention as to the use of the scissors ; and having cut the linen strip in a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had run out at the open door where the sunshine was inviting her, while poor Silas believed her to be SILAS MAKNEK. 189 a better child than usual. It was not until he hap- pened to need his scissors that the terrible fact burst upon him ; Eppie had run out by herself — had per- haps fallen into the Stone-pit Silas, shaken by the worst fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling " Eppie 1" and ran eagerly about the unen- closed space, exploring the dry cavities into which she might have fallen, and then gazing with question- ing dread at the smooth red surface of the water. The cold drops stood on his brow. How long had she been out ? There was one hope — that she had crept through the stile and got into the fields where he ha- bitually took her to stroll. But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was no descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood's crop. Still, that misde- meanour must be committed; and poor Silas, after peering all round the hedgerows, traversed the grass, beginning with perturbed vision to see Eppie behind every group of red sorrel, and to see her moving al- ways farther off as he approached. The meadow was searched in vain; and he got over the stile into the next field, looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shallow- ness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud. Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheer- fully to her own small boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a deep hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was planted comfortably on a cushion of olive-green mud. A red-headed calf was observing her with alarmed doubt through the opposite hedge. 190 SILAS MARKER. Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christen- ed child which demanded severe treatment ; but Silas, overcome with convulsive joy at finding his treasure again, could do nothing but snatch her up, and cover her with half-sobbing kisses. It was not until he had carried her home, and had begun to think of the nec- essary washing, that he recollected the need that he should punish Eppie, and "make her remember." The idea that she might run away again and come to harm, gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time he determined to try the coal-hole — a small closet near the hearth. "Naughty, naughty Eppie," he suddenly began, holding her on his knee, and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes — " naughty to cut with the scissors, and run away. Eppie must go into the coal-hole for being naughty. Daddy must put her in the coal-hole." He half expected that this would be shock enough, and that Eppie would begin to cry. But instead of that, she began to shake herself on his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleasing novelty. Seeing that he must proceed to extremities, he put her into the coal-hole, and held the door closed, with a trembling sense that he was using a strong measure. For a mo- ment there was silence, but then came a little cry: " Opy, opy !" and Silas let her out again, saying, "Now Eppie 'ull never be naughty again, else she must go in the coal-hole — a black naughty place." The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for now Eppie must be washed and have clean clothes on; but it was to be hoped that this punishment would have a lasting effect, and save time SILAS MARNER. 191 in future — though, perhaps, it would have been better if Eppie had. cried more. In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas hav- ing turned his back to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it down again with the reflection that Eppie would be good without fastening for the rest of the morning. He turned round again, and was going to place her in her little chair near the loom, when she peeped out at him with black face and hands again, and said, " Eppie in de toal-hole !" This total failure of the coal-hole discipline shook Silas's belief in the efficacy of punishment. " She'd take it all for fun," he observed to Dolly, " if I didn't hurt her, and that I can't do, Mrs. Winthrop. If she makes me a bit of trouble, I can bear it. And she's got no tricks but what she'll grow out of." "Well, that's partly true, Master Marner," said Dolly, sympathetically ; " and if you can't bring your mind to frighten her off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of her way. That's what I do wi' the pups as the lads are allays a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw — worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help 'em : it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets them on, that's what it is." So Eppie was reared without punishment, the bur- den of her misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone-hut was made a soft nest for her, lined with downy patience : and also in the world that lay beyond the stone-hut for her, she knew nothing of frowns and denials. 192 SILAS MAENER. Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn or linen at the same time, Silas took her with him in most of his journeys to the farm-houses, un- willing to leave her behind at Dolly Winthrop's, who was always ready to take care of her ; and little curly- headed Eppie, the weaver's child, became an object of interest at several out-lying homesteads, as well as in the village. Hitherto he had been treated very much as if he had been a useful gnome or brownie — a queer and unaccountable creature, who must necessarily be looked at with wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would be glad to make all greetings and bargains as brief as possible, but who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occasionally have a present of pork or garden-stuff to carry home with him, seeing that without him there was no get- ting the yarn woven. But now Silas met with open smiling faces and cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and difficulties could be under- stood. Everywhere he must sit a little and talk about the child, and words of interest were always ready for him : " Ah, Master Marner, you'll be lucky if she takes the measles soon and easy !" — or, " Why, there isn't many lone men 'ud ha' been wishing to take up with a little un like that : but I reckon the weaving makes you handier than men as do out-door work — you're partly as handy as a woman, for weaving comes next to spinning." Elderly masters and mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen arm-chairs, shook their heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing chil- dren, felt Eppie's round arms and legs, and pronounced them remarkably firm, and told Silas that, if she turn- SILAS MARNER, 193 ed out well (which, however, there was no telling), it would be a fine thing for him to have a steady lass to do for him when he got helpless. Servant maidens were fond of carrying her out to look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries could be shaken down in the orchard ; and the small boys and girls approached her slowly, with cautious movement and steady gaze, like little dogs face to face with one of their own kind, till attraction had reached the point at which the soft lips were put out for a kiss. No child was afraid of approaching Silas when Eppie was near him ; there was no repulsion around him now, either for young or old ; for the little child had come / to link him once more withjhe. whole world. There was love between him and the child that blent them into one, and there was love between the child and the world, from men and women with parental looks and tones to the red lady -birds and the round pebbles. Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie : she must have everything that was a good in Raveloe ; and he listened docilely, that he might come to understand better what this life was, from which, for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange thing with which he could have no communion : as some man who has a precious plant, to which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil, thinks of the rain and sunshine, and all influences, in relation to his nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to guard leaf and bud from invading harm. The disposition to hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by the loss of his I 194 SILAS MARNEK. long -stored gold: the coins he earned afterwards seemed as irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly buried by an earthquake ; the sense of bereavement was too heavy upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again at the touch of the newly-earned coin. And now something had come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to the earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money. In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand, and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruc- tion : a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child's. SILAS MARNER. 195 CHAPTER XV. There was one person, as you will believe, who watched with keener though more hidden interest than any other, the prosperous growth of Eppie un- der the weaver's care. He dared not do anything that would imply a stronger interest in a poor man's adopted child than could be expected from the kind- liness of the young Squire, when a chance meeting suggested a little present to a simple old fellow whom others noticed with good will; but he told himself that the time would come when he might do some- thing towards furthering the welfare of his daughter without incurring suspicions. Was he very uneasy in the mean time at his inability to give his daughter her birthright? I cannol ._gay that he was. The child was being taken care of, and would very likely be happy, as people in humble stations often were — happier, perhaps, than those who are brought up in luxury. That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot duty and followed desire — I wonder if it prick- ed very hard when he set out on the chase, or wheth- er it pricked but lightly then, and only pierced to the quick when the chase had long been ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked backward and became re- gret? Godfrey Cass's cheek and eye were brighter than 196 SILAS MARKER. ever now. He was so undivided in his aims that he seemed like a man of firmness. No Dunsey had come back: people had made up their minds that he was gone for a soldier, or gone " out of the country," and no one cared to be specific in their inquiries on a sub- ject delicate to a respectable family. Godfrey had npqg^ tr> gPA t.TiP sLn/ln^r nf Dunsey across his path ; and the path now lay straight forward to the accom- plishment nf his hpstj lon gest-cherished w ishes. Ev- erybody said Mr. Godfrey had taken the right turn ; and it was pretty clear what would be the end of things, for there were ,not many days in the week that he was not seen riding to the Warrens. Godfrey himself, when he was asked jocosely if the day had been fixed, smiled with the pleasant consciousness of a lover who could say "yes," if he liked. Hg jelt a reJforjne d man, delivered fro m temptation; and the vigion ofjt is future life seemed to him as a promised land:- fox, which ho haxLjiq^cause to fight" leiar himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth, where Nancy would smile on him as he play- ed^withjhe children^ And that other child— not on the hearth — he would not forget it ; he would see that it was well provided for. That was a father's duty. PART II. SILAS MARNER. 199 CHAPTER XVI. It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years after Silas Marner had found his new treasure on the hearth. The bells of the old Raveloe church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning service was ended ; and out of the arched doorway in the tower came slowly, retarded by friendly greetings and ques- tions, the richer parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for church-going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the more im- portant members of the congregation to depart first, while their humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads or dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned to notice them. Foremost among these advancing groups of well- clad people there are some whom we shall recognise, in spite of Time, who has laid his hand on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed in feature from the Godfrey Cass of six-and-twenty : he is only fuller in flesh, and has only lost the indefinable look of youth — a loss which is marked even when the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not yet come. Perhaps the pretty woman, not much younger than he, who is leaning on his arm, is more changed than her husband : the lovely bloom that used to be always on her cheek now comes but fitfully with the fresh morning air or with some strong surprise ; yet to all 200 SILAS MARNER. who love human faces best for what they tell of human experience, Nancy's beauty has a heightened interest. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the years have not been so cruel to Nancy. The firm yet placid mouth, the clear veracious glance of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature that has been tested and has kept its highest qualities ; and even the costume, with its dainty neatness and purity, has more signifi- cance now the coquetries of youth can have nothing to do with it. Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away from Eaveloe lips since the old Squire was gathered to his fathers, and his inheritance was di- vided) have turned round to look for the tall aged man and the plainly-dressed woman who are a little behind — Nancy having observed that they must wait for "Father and Priscilla" — and now they all turn into a narrower path leading across the churchyard to a small gate opposite the Eed House. We will not follow them now ; for may there not be some others in this departing congregation whom we should like to see again — some of those who are not likely to be handsomely clad, and whom we may not recognise so easily as the master and mistress of the Eed House ? But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large brown eyes seem to have gathered a longer vi- sion, as is the way with eyes that have been short- sighted in early life, and they have a less vague, a more answering look; but in everything else one sees signs of a frame much enfeebled by the lapse of the SILAS MARKER. 201 sixteen years. The weaver's bent shoulders and white hair give him almost tfre look of advanced age, though he is not more than five-and-fifty ; but there is the freshest blossom of youth close by his side — a blonde dimpled girl of eighteen, who has vainly tried to chas- tise her curly auburn hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet: the hair ripples as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the little ring- lets burst away from the restraining comb behind and show themselves below the bonnet-crown. Eppie cannot help being rather vexed about her hair, for there is no other girl in Eaveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair ought to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy even in small things : you see how neatly her prayer-book is folded in her spotted handkerchief. That good-looking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who walks behind her, is not quite sure upon the question of hair in the abstract, when Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that perhaps straight hair is the best in general, but he doesn't want Eppie's hair to be dif- ferent. She surely divines that there is some one be- hind her who is thinking about her very particularly, and mustering courage to come to her side as soon as they are out in the lane, else why should she look rather shy, and take care not to turn her head from her father Silas, to whom she keeps murmuring little sentences as to who was at church and who was not at church, and how pretty the red mountain-ash is over the Eectory wall ? " I wish we had a little garden, father, with double daisies in, like Mrs. Winthrop's," said Eppie, when 12 202 SILAS MARSTER. they were out in the lane ; " only they say it 'ud take a deal of digging and bringing fresh soil — and you couldn't do that, could you, father? Anyhow, I shouldn't like you to do it, for it 'ud be too hard work for you." u Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o' gar- den : these long evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o' the waste, just enough for a root or two o' flowers for you ; and again, i' the morning, I could have a turn wi' the spade before I sat down to the loom. Why didn't you tell me before as you wanted a bit o' garden?" "/ can dig it for you, Master Marner," said the young man in fustian, who was now by Eppie's side, entering into the conversation without the trouble of formalities. "It'll be play to me after I've done my day's work, or any odd bits o' time when the work's slack. And I'll bring you some soil from Mr. Cass's garden — he'll let me, and willing." "Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there?" said Silas; " I wasn't aware of you ; for when Eppie's talking o' things, I see nothing but what she's a-saying. Well, if you could help me with the digging, we might get her a bit o' garden all the sooner." "Then, if you think well and good," said Aaron, " I'll come to the Stone-pits this afternoon, and we'll settle what land's to be taken in, and I'll get up an hour earlier i' the morning, and begin on it." "But not if you don't promise me not to work at the hard digging, father," said Eppie. "For I shouldn't ha' said anything about it," she added, half-bashfully, half-roguishly, "only Mrs. Winthrop said as Aaron 'ud be so good, and — " SILAS MARNEK. 203 11 And you might ha' known it without mother tell- ing you," said Aaron. " And Master Marner knows too, I hope, as I'm able and willing to do a turn o' work for him, and he won't do me the unkindness to anyways take it out o' my hands." " There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy," said Eppie, " and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes and plant the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits when we've got some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o' rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so sweet-smelling; but there's no lavender only in the gentlefolks' gardens, I think." " That's no reason why you shouldn't have some," said Aaron, "for I can bring you slips of anything; I'm forced to cut no end of 'em when I'm gardening, and throw 'em away mostly. There's a big bed o' lavender at the Eed House : the missis is very fond of it." " Well," said Silas, gravely, " so as you don't make free for us, or ask for anything as is worth much at the Eed House ; for Mr. Cass's been so good to us, and built us up the new end o' the cottage, and given us beds and things, as I couldn't abide to be imposin' for garden-stuff or anything else." " No, no, there's no imposing," said Aaron ; "there's never a garden in all the parish but what there's end- less waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself some- times, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never 204 SILAS MARKER. a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It sets one thinking o' that — gardening does. But I must go back now, else mother 'ull be in trouble as I aren't there." " Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron," said Eppie ; "I shouldn't like to fix about the garden, and her not know everything from the first — should you, father?" "Ay, bring her if you can, Aaron," said Silas; "she's sure to have a word to say as'll help us to set things on their right end." Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie went on up the lonely sheltered lane. u O daddy!" she began, when they were in privacy, clasping and squeezing Silas's arm, and skipping round to give him an energetic kiss. "My little old daddy! I'm so glad. I don't think I shall want anything else when we've got a little garden ; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us," she went on with roguish tri- umph — "I knew that very well." "You're a deep little puss, you are," said Silas, with the mild passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face; "but you'll make yourself fine and beholden to Aaron." " O no, I shan't," said Eppie, laughing and frisking ; "he likes it." " Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you'll be dropping it, jumping i' that way." Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was un- der observation, but it was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log fastened to his foot — a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human SILAS MARKER. 205 trivialities, but thankful to snare in them, if possible, by getting his nose scratched ; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her usual notice, though it was at- tended with the inconvenience of his following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home. But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key in the door, modified the donkey's views, and he limped away again without bidding. The sharp bark was the sign of an excited welcome that was awaiting them from a knowing brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in an hysterical manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell kitten under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, as much as to say, " I have done my duty by this feeble creature, you perceive ;" while the lady- mother of the kitten sat sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round with a sleepy air of ex- pecting caresses, though she was not going to take any trouble for them. . The presence of this happy animal life was not the only change which had come over the interior of the stone cottage. There was no bed now in the living room, and the small space was well filled with decent furniture, all bright and clean enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop's eye. The oaken table and three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was likely to be seen in so poor a cottage : they had come, with the beds and other things, from the Red House ; for Mr. God- frey Cass, as every one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver ; and it was nothing but right a man should be looked on and helped by those who could afford it, when he had brought up an orphan 206 SILAS MARNER. child, and been father and mother to her — and had lost his money too, so as he had nothing but what he worked for week by week, and when the weaving was going down too — for there was less and less flax spun — and Master Marner was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for he was regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on neighbourly help were not to be matched in Eaveloe. Any supersti- tion that remained concerning him had taken an en- tirely new colour ; and Mr. Macey, now a very feeble old man of fourscore and six, never seen except in his chimney-corner or sitting in the sunshine at his door- sill, was of opinion that when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it — for, as Mr. Macey observed of himself, his faculties were as strong as ever. Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a sat- isfied gaze as she spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, warmed up slowly in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into a dry pot over a slowly-dy- ing fire, as the best substitute for an oven. For Silas would not consent to have a grate and oven added to his conveniences : he loved the old brick hearth as he had loved his brown pot — and was it not there when he had found Eppie ? The gods of the hearth exist for us still ; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots. Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying down his knife and fork, and watching half- abstractedly Eppie's play with Snap and the cat, by SILAS MARNEE. 207 which her own dining was made rather a lengthy bus- iness. Yet it was a sight that might well arrest wan- dering thoughts : Eppie, with the rippling radiance of her hair and the whiteness of her rounded chin and throat set off by the dark-blue cotton gown, laughing merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws to one shoulder, like a design for a jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both — Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on fhe greediness and futility of her conduct ; till Ep- pie relented, caressed them both, and divided the mor- sel between them. But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, and said, " daddy, you're wanting to go into the sunshine to smoke your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house may be tidy when god- mother comes. I'll make haste — I won't be long." Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years, having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Eaveloe, as a practice " good for the fits ;" and this advice was sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well to try what could do no harm — a principle which was made to answer for a great deal of work in that gentleman's medical prac- tice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it ; but a humble sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good, had become a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in him since he had found Eppie on his hearth : it had been the only clue his be- 208 SILAS MARKER. wildered mind could hold by in cherishing this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was needful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that every- thing produced on her, he had himself come to appro- priate the forms of custom and belief which were the mould ofKaveloe life; and as, with reawakening sen- sibilities, memory also reawakened, he had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a con- sciousness of unity between his past and present. The sense of presiding goodness and the human trust which come with all pure peace and joy, had given him a dim impression that there had been some error, some mistake, which had thrown that dark shadow over the days of his best years ; and as it grew more and more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly Winthrop, he gradually communicated to her all he could describe of his early life. The communication was necessarily a slow and difficult process, for Silas's meagre power of explanation was not aided by any readiness of in- terpretation in Dolly, whose narrow outward experi- ence gave her no key to strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder that arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only by frag- ments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to re- volve what she had heard till it acquired some famil- iarity for her, that Silas at last arrived at the climax of the sad story — the drawing of lots, and its false tes- timony concerning him ; and this had to be repeated in several interviews, under new questions on her part as to the nature of this plan for detecting the guilty and clearing the innocent. SILAS MARNER. 209 " And yourn's the same Bible, you're sure o' that, Master Marner — the Bible as you brought wi' you from that country — it's the same as what they've got at church, and what Eppie's a-learning to read in ?" " Yes," said Silas, " every bit the same ; and there's drawing o' lots in the Bible, mind you," he added, in a lower tone. " dear, dear," said Dolly, in a grieved voice, as if she were hearing an unfavourable report of a sick man's case. She was silent for some minutes ; at last she said, " There's wise folks, happen, as knows how it all is ; the parson knows, I'll be bound ; but it takes big words to tell them things, and such as poor folks can't make much out on. I can never rightly know the meaning o' what I hear at church, only a bit here and there, but I know it's good words — I do. But what lies upo' your mind — it's this, Master Marner: as, if Them above had done the right thing by you, They'd never ha' let you be turned out for a wicked thief when you was innicent." " Ah !" said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly's phraseology, "that was what fell on me like as if it had been red-hot iron ; because, you see, there was nobody as cared for me or clave to me above nor below. And him as I'd gone out and in wi' for ten year and more, since when we was lads and went halves — mine own famil'ar friend, in whom I trusted," had lifted up his heel again' me, and worked to ruin me." "Eh, but he was a bad un — I can't think as there's another such," said Dolly. "But I'm o'ercome, Mas- 210 SILAS MARNER. ter Marner ; I'm like as if I'd waked and didn't know whether it was night or morning. I feel somehow as sure as I do when I've laid something up though I can't justly put my hand on it, as there was a right in what happened to you, if one could but make it out ; and you'd no call to lose heart as you did. But we'll talk on it again ; for sometimes things come into my head when I'm leeching or poulticing, or such, as I could never think on when I was sitting still." Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportunities of illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was not long before she recurred to the subject. " Master Marner," she said, one day that she came to bring home Eppie's washing, "I've been sore puz- zled for a good bit wi' that trouble o' yourn and the drawing o' lots ; and it got twisted back'ards and for- 'ards, as I didn't know which end to lay hold on. But it come to me all clear like, that night when I was sit- ting up wi' poor Bessy Fawkes, as is dead and left her children behind, Grod help 'em — it come to me as clear as daylight ; but whether I've got hold on it now, or can anyways bring it to my tongue's end, that I don't know. For I've often a deal inside me as '11 niver come out; and for what you talk o' your folks in your old country niver saying prayers by heart nor saying 'em out of a book, they must be wonderful cliver ; for if I didn't know ' Our Father,' and little bits o' good words as I can carry out o' church wi' me, I might down o' my knees every night but nothing could I say." " But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on, Mrs. Winthrop," said Silas. SILAS MARNER. 211 "Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this : I can make nothing o' the drawing o' lots and the answer coming wrong; it 'ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i' big words. But what come to me as clear as the daylight, it was when I was troubling over poor Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes into my head when I'm sorry for folks, and feel as I can't do a power to help 'em, not if I was to get up i' the middle o' the night — it comes into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor what I've got — for I can't be anyways bet- ter nor Them as made me, and if anything looks hard to me, it's because there's things I don't know on ; and for the matter o' that, there may be plenty o' things I don't know on, for it's little as I know — that it is. And so, while I was thinking o' that, you come into my mind, Master Marner, and it all come pouring in : if /felt i' my inside what was the right and just thing by you, and them as prayed and drawed the lots, all but that wicked un, if they'd ha' done the right thing by you if they could, isn't there Them as was at the making on us, and knows better and has a better will ? And that's all as ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to me when I think on it. For there was the fever come and took off them as were full-growed, and left the helpless children; and there's the breaking o' limbs ; and them as 'ud do right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairy — eh, there's trouble i' this world, and there's things as we can niver make out the rights on. And all as we've got to do is to trusten, Master Marner — to do the right thing as fur as we know, and to trust- 212 SILAS MARNEE. en. For if us as knows so little can see a bit o' good and rights, we may be sure as there's a good and a rights bigger nor what we can know — I feel it i' my own inside as it must be so. And if you could but ha' gone on trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn't ha' run away from your fellow-creaturs and been so lone." " Ah, but that 'ud ha' been hard," said Silas, in an under tone ; "it 'ud ha' been hard to trusten then." "And so it would," said Dolly, almost with com- punction; "them things are easier said nor done; and I'm partly ashamed o' talking." "Nay, nay," said Silas, "you're i' the right, Mrs. "Winthrop — you're i' the right. There's good i' this world, i' spite o' the trouble and the wickedness. That drawing o' the lots is dark ; but the child was sent to me : there's dealings with us — there's dealings." This dialogue took place in Eppie's earlier years, when Silas had to part with her for two hours every day, that she might learn to read at the dame school, after he had vainly tried himself to guide her in that first step to learning. Now that she was grown up, Silas had often been led, in those moments of quiet outpouring which come to people who live together in perfect love, to talk with her too of the past, and how and why he had lived a lonely man until she had been sent to him. For it would have been im- possible for him to hide from Eppie that she was not his own child : even if the most delicate reticence on the point could have been expected from Kaveloe gossips in her presence, her own questions about her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up, SILAS MARNER. 213 without that complete shrouding of the past which would have made a painful barrier between their minds. So Eppie had long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground, and how she herself had been found on the hearth by father Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas brought back to him. The tender and peculiar love with which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable compan- ionship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, had preserved her from the lowering influ- ences of the village talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness which is sometimes falsely sup- posed to be an invariable attribute of rusticity. Per- fect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least instructed human beings ; and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to Silas's hearth ; so that it is not sur- prising if, in other things besides her delicate pretti- ness, she was not quite a common village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervour which came from no other teaching than that of tenderly-nurtured unvitiated feeling. She was too childish and simple for her imagination to rove into questions about her unknown father ; for a long while it did not even oc- cur to her that she must have had a father ; and the first time that the idea of her mother having had a husband presented itself to her, was when Silas show- ed her the wedding-ring which had been taken from the wasted finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a little lackered box shaped like a shoe. He delivered this box into Eppie's charge when she 214 SILAS MARKER. had grown up, and she often opened it to look at the ring ; but still she thought hardly at all about the fa- ther of whom it was the symbol. Had she not a fa- ther very close to her, who loved her better than any real fathers in the village seemed to love their daugh- ters ? On the contrary, who her mother was, and how she came to die in that forlornness, were questions that often pressed on Eppie's mind. Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her nearest friend next to Silas, made her feel that a mother must be very pre- cious; and she had again and again asked Silas to tell her how her mother looked, whom she was like, and how he had found her against the furze bush, led towards it by the little footsteps and the outstretched arms. The furze bush was there still ; and this after- noon, when Eppie came out with Silas into the sun- shine, it was the first object that arrested her eyes and thoughts. "Father," she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which sometimes came like a sadder, slower cadence across her playfulness, " we shall take the furze bush into the garden; it'll come into the corner, and just against it I'll put snowdrops and crocuses, 'cause Aaron says they won't die out, but '11 always get more and more." "Ah, child," said Silas, always ready to talk when he had his pipe in his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses more than the puffs, " it wouldn't do to leave out the furze bush ; and there's nothing prettier, to my thinking, when it's yallow with flowers. But it's just come into my head what we're to do for a fence — mayhap Aaron can help us to a thought; but a SILAS MARNER. 215 fence we must have, else the donkeys and things 'ull come and trample everything down. And fencing's hard to be got at, by what I can make out." " 0, I'll tell you, daddy," said Eppie, clasping her hands suddenly, after a minute's thought. "There's lots o' loose stones about, some of 'em not big, and we might lay 'em atop of one another and make a wall. You and me could carry the smallest, and Aaron 'ud carry the rest — I know he would." "Eh, my precious un," said Silas, " there isn't enough stones to go all round ; and as for you carrying, why, wi' your little arms you couldn't carry a stone bigger than a turnip. You're delicate made, my dear," he added, with a tender intonation — "that's what Mrs. "Winthrop says." " 0, I'm stronger than you think, daddy," said Ep- pie; "and if there wasn't stones enough to go all round, why they'll go part o' the way, and then it'll be easier to get sticks and things for the rest. See here, round the big pit, what a many stones !" She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to lift one of the stones and exhibit her strength, but she started back in surprise. " 0, father, just come and look here," she exclaim- ed — " come and see how the water's gone down since yesterday. "Why, yesterday the pit was ever so full !" " Well, to be sure," said Silas, coming to her side. "Why, that's the draining they've begun on, since harvest, i' Mr. Osgood's fields, I reckon. The foreman said to me the other day, when I passed by 'em, ' Mas- ter Marner,' he said, ' I shouldn't wonder if we lay your bit o' waste as dry as a bone.' It was Mr. God- 216 SILAS MARNEE. frey Cass, lie said, had gone into the draining: he'd been taking these fields o' Mr. Osgood." "How odd it '11 seem to have the old pit dried up," said Eppie, turning away, and stooping to lift rather a large stone. " See, daddy, I can carry this quite well," she said, going along with much energy for a few steps, but presently letting it fall. " Ah, you're fine and strong, arn't you?" said Silas, while Eppie shook her aching arms and laughed. " Come, come, let us go and sit down on the bank against the stile there, and have no more lifting. You might hurt yourself, child. You'd need have some- body to work for you — and my arm isn't over strong." Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it im- plied more than met the ear; and Eppie, when they sat down on the bank, nestled close to his side, and, taking hold caressingly of the arm that was not over strong, held it on her lap, while Silas puffed again dutifully at the pipe, which occupied his other arm. An ash in the hedgerow behind made a fretted screen from the sun, and threw happy playful shadows all about them. "Father," said Eppie, very gently, after they had been sitting in silence a little while, " if I was to be married, ought I to be married with my mother's ring ?" Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though the question fell in with the under-current of thought in his own mind, and then said, in a subdued tone, "Why, Eppie, have you been a-thinking on it?" " Only this last week, father," said Eppie, ingenu- ously, " since Aaron talked to me about it." SILAS MARNEK. 217 " And what did he say ?" said Silas, still in the same subdued way, as if he were anxious lest he should fall into the slightest tone that was not for Eppie's good. " He said he should like to be married, because he was a-going in four-and-twenty, and had got a deal of gardening work, now Mr. Mott's given up; and he goes twice a-week regular to Mr. Cass's, and once to Mr. Osgood's, and they're going to take him on at the Kectory." "And who is it as he's wanting to marry?" said Silas, with rather a sad smile. "Why, me, to be sure, daddy," said Eppie, with dimpling laughter, kissing her father's cheek ; " as if he'd want to marry anybody else !" "And you mean to have him, do you?" said Silas. " Yes, some time," said Eppie, " I don't know when. Everybody's married some time, Aaron says. But I told him that wasn't true ; for, I said, look at father — he's never been married." " No, child," said Silas, " your father was a lone man till you was sent to him." " But you'll never be lone again, father," said Ep- pie, tenderly. " That was what Aaron said — ' I could never think o' taking you away from Master Marner, Eppie.' And I said, ' It 'ud be no use if you did, Aaron.' And he wants us all to live together, so as you needn't work a bit, father, only what's for your own pleasure ; and he'd be as good as a son to you — that was what he said." " And should you like that, Eppie ?" said Silas, looking at her. " I shouldn't mind it, father," said Eppie, quite sim- K 218 SILAS MARNER. ply. "And I should like things to be so as you needn't work much. But if it wasn't for that, I'd sooner things didn't change. I'm very happy : I like Aaron to be fond of me, and come and see us often, and behave pretty to you — he always does behave pretty to you, doesn't he, father ?" " Yes, child, nobody could behave better," said Si- las, emphatically. " He's his mother's lad." "But I don't want any change," said Eppie. "I should like to go on a long, long while, just as we are. Only Aaron does want a change; and he made me cry a bit — only a bit — because he said I didn't care for him ; for if I cared for him I should want us to be married, as he did." "Eh, my blessed child," said Silas, laying down his pipe as if it were useless to pretend to smoke any lon- ger, "you're o'er young to be married. We'll ask Mrs. Winthrop— we'll ask Aaron's mother what she thinks : if there's a right thing to do, she'll come at it. But there's this to be thought on, Eppie : things will change, whether we like it or not ; things won't go on for a long while just as they are and no difference. I shall get older and helplesser, and be a burthen on you, belike, if I don't go away from you altogether. Not as I mean you'd think me a burden — I know you wouldn't — but it 'ud be hard upon you ; and when I look for'ard to that, I like to think as you'd have somebody else besides me — somebody young and strong, as'll outlast your own life, and take care on you to the end." Silas paused, and, resting his wrists on his knees, lifted his hands up and down meditative- ly as he looked on the ground. SILAS MARNER. 219 a Then would you like me to be married, father ?" said Eppie, with a little trembling in her voice. " I'll not be the man to say no, Eppie," said Silas, emphatically ; " but we'll ask your godmother. She'll wish the right thing by you and her son too." 11 There they come then," said Eppie. " Let us go and meet 'em. the pipe! won't you have it lit again, father?" said Eppie, lifting that medicinal ap- pliance from the ground. "Nay, child," said Silas, "I've done enough for to- day. I think, mayhap, a little of it does me more good than so much at once." 220 SILAS MARNER. CHAPTER XVII. While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing in the fleckered shade of the ash-tree, Miss Priscilla Lammeter was resisting her sister's argu- ments, that it would be better to stay to tea at the Red House, and let her father have a long nap, than drive home to the Warrens so soon after dinner. The family party (of four only) were seated round the ta- ble in the dark wainscoted parlour, with the Sunday dessert before them, of fresh filberts, apples, and pears, duly ornamented with leaves by Nancy's own hand before the bells had rung for church. A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlour since we saw it in Godfrey's bachelor days, and under the wifeless reign of the old Squire. Now all is polish, on which no yesterday's dust is ever al- lowed to settle, from the yard's width of oaken boards round the carpet, to the old Squire's gun and whips and walking-sticks, ranged on the stag's antlers above the mantel-piece. All other signs of sporting and outdoor occupation Nancy has removed to another room ; but she has brought into the Red House the habit of filial reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of honour these relics of her husband's departed father. The tankards are on the side-table still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and there SILAS MARNER. 221 are no dregs to send forth unpleasant suggestions : the only prevailing scent is of the lavender and rose-leaves that fill the vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by a new presiding spirit. " Now, father," said Nancy, " is there any call for you to go home to tea? Mayn't you just as well stay with us? — such a beautiful evening as it's likely to be." The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the increasing poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard the dialogue between his daugh- ters. "My dear, you must ask Priscilla," he said, in the once firm voice, now become rather broken. " She manages me and the farm too." " And reason good as I should manage you, father," said Priscilla, "else you'd be giving yourself your-, death with rheumatism. And as for the farm, if any- thing turns out wrong, as it can't but do in these times, there's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. It's a deal theiyv/**^, best way o' being master, to let somebody else do the/ ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. It 'ud save many a man a stroke, 1 believe." ^/ s " Well, well, my dear," said her father, with a quiet laugh, -ilXdidn't say you don't managelor everybody's good." " Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla," said Nancy, putting her hand on her sister's arm affec- tionately. " Come now; and we'll go round the gar- den while father has his nap." 222 SILAS MAKNER. " My dear child, he'll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I shall drive. And as for staying tea, I can't hear of it ; for there's this dairymaid, now she knows she's to be married, turned Michaelmas, she'd as lieve pour the new milk into the pig- trough as into the pans. That's the way with 'em all: it's as if they thought the world 'ud be new-made because they're to be married. So come and let me put my bonnet on, and there'll be time for us to walk round the gar- den while the horse is being put in." When the sisters were treading the neatly-swept garden-walks, between the bright turf that contrasted pleasantly with the dark cones and arches and wall- like hedges of yew, Priscilla said — " I'm as glad as anything at your husband's making that exchange o' land with cousin Osgood, and begin- ning the dairying. It's a thousand pities you didn't do it before ; for it'll give you something to fill your mind. There's nothing like a dairy if folks want a bit o' worrit to make the days pass. For as for rubbing- furniture, when you can once see your face in a table there's nothing else to look for; but there's always something fresh with the dairy ; for even in the depths o' winter there's some pleasure in conquering the but- ter, and making it come whether or no. My dear," added Priscilla, pressing her sister's hand affectionate- ly as they walked side by side, " you'll never be low when you've got a dairy." "Ah, Priscilla," said Nancy, returning the pressure with a grateful glance of her clear eyes, " but it won't make up to Godfrey : a dairy's not so much to a man. And it's only what he cares for that ever makes me SILAS MAENER. 223 low. I'm contented with, the blessings we have, if he could be contented." " It drives me past patience," said Priscilla, impet- uously, "that way o' the men — always wanting and wanting, and never easy with what they've got : they can't sit comfortable in their chairs when they've nei- ther ache nor pain, but either they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to make 'em better than well, or else they must be swallowing something strong, though they're forced to make haste before the next meal comes in. But, joyful be it spoken, our father was never that sort o' man. And if it had pleased God to make you ugly, like me, so as the men wouldn't ha' run after you, we might have kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks as have got uneasy blood in their veins." " O don't say so, Priscilla," said Nancy, repenting that she had called forth this outburst; "nobody has any occasion to find fault with Godfrey. It's natural he should be disappointed at not having any children : every man likes to have somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted so on making a fuss with them when they were little. There's many an- other man 'ud hanker more than he does. He's the best of husbands." "0, 1 know," said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, "I know the way o' wives; they set one on to abuse their husbands, and then they turn round on one and praise 'em as if they wanted to sell 'em. But father '11 be waiting for me ; we must turn now." The large gig with the steady old grey was at the front door, and Mr. Lammeter was already on the stone 224 SILAS MARNER. steps, passing the time in recalling to Godfrey what very fine points Speckle had when his master used to ride him. "I always would have a good horse, you know," said the old gentleman, not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced from the memory of his juniors. " Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week's out, Mr. Cass," was Priscilla's parting injunc- tion, as she took the reins, and shook them gently, by way of friendly injunction to Speckle. "I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, Nancy, and look at the draining," said God- frey. "You'll be in again by tea-time, dear?" " O yes, I shall be back in an hour." It was Godfrey's custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a little contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom accompanied him, for the women of her generation — unless, like Priscilla, they took to out- door management — were not given to much walking beyond their own house and garden, finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So, when Priscilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant's Bible before her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little while, she would gradually permit them to wan- der, as her thoughts had already insisted on wander- ing. But Nancy's Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keeping with the devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very clearly the relation between the sacred docu- SILAS MARNER. 225 ments of the past which she opened without method, and her own obscure simple life ; but the spirit of rec- titude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinise her past feelings and actions with self ques- tioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted by a great variety of subjects, she filled the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and again, through all her remembered experience, especially through the fifteen years of her married time, in which her life and its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small details, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which had opened a new epoch for her, by giv- ing her a deeper insight into the relations and trials of life, or which had called on her for some little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence to an imagined or real duty — asking herself continually whether she had been in any respect blamable. This excessive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps a morbid habit inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out from its due share of outward activity and of practical claims on its affections — inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless woman, when her lot is nar- row. "I can do so little — have I done it all well?" is the perpetually recurring thought ; and there are no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no pe- remptory demands to divert energy from vain regret or superfluous scruple. There was one main thread of personal experience in Nancy's married life, and on it hung certain deep- ly-felt scenes, which were the oftenest revived in ret- K2 226 SILAS MARNER. rospect. The short dialogue with Priscilla in the gar- den had determined the current of retrospect in that frequent direction this particular Sunday afternoon. The first wandering of her thought from the text, which she still attempted dutifully to follow with her eyes and silent lips, was into an imaginary enlarge- ment of the defence she had set up for her husband against Priscilla's implied blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm affection can find for its wounds: — "A man must have so much on his mind," is the belief by which a wife often supports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling words. And Nancy's deepest wounds had all come from the perception that the absence of children from their hearth was dwelt on in her husband's mind as a privation to which he could not reconcile himself. Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still more keenly the denial of a blessing to which she had looked forward with all the varied expectations and preparations, solemn and prettily trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman when she expects to become a mother. Was there not a drawer filled with the neat work of her hands, all unworn and untouch- ed, just as she had arranged it there fourteen years ago—just, but for one little dress, which had been made the burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy was so firmly unmurmuring, that years ago she had suddenly renounced the habit of visiting this drawer, lest she should in this way be cherishing a longing for what was not given. Per- haps it was this very severity towards any indulgence of what she held to be sinful regret in herself, that SILAS MARKER. 227 made her shrink from applying her own standard to her husband. "It was very different — it was much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way : a woman could always be satisfied with devoting her- self to her husband, but a man wanted something that would make him look forward more — and sitting by the fire was so much duller to him than to a woman." And always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditations — trying, with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it — there came a renewal of self-questioning. Had she done everything in her power to lighten Godfrey's privation? Had she really been right in the resistance which had cost her so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago — the resistance to her husband's wish that they should adopt a child ? Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits of that time than of our own ; still Nancy had her opinion of it. It was as necessary to her mind to have an opinion on all top- ics, not exclusively masculine, that had come under her notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place for every article of her personal property : and her opinions were always principles to be unwaver- ingly acted on. They were firm, not because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenacity in- separable from her mental action. On all the duties and proprieties of life, from filial behaviour to the ar- rangement of the evening toilette, pretty Nancy Lam- meter, by the time she was three-and-twenty, had her unalterable little code, and had formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that code. She carried these decided judgments within her in the 228 SILAS MAKNEK. most unobtrusive way : they rooted themselves in her mind, and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she insisted on dressing like Priscilla, be- cause "it was right for sisters to dress alike," and be- cause " she would do what was right if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-colouring." That was a triv- ial but typical instance of the mode in which Nancy's life was regulated. It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic feeling, which had been the ground of Nancy's difficult resistance to her husband's wish. To adopt a child, because children of your own had been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Provi- dence; and the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and would be a curse to those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought that which it was clear that, for some high reason, they were better without. When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it was a bounden duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. And so far, per- haps, the wisest of men could scarcely make more than a verbal improvement in her principle. But the con- ditions under which she held it apparent that a thing was not meant to be, depended on a more peculiar mode of thinking. She would have given up making a purchase at a particular place if, on three successive times, rain, or some other cause of heaven's sending, had formed an obstacle ; and she would have antici- pated a broken limb or other heavy misfortune to any one who persisted in spite of such indications. " But why should you think the child would turn out ill?" said Godfrey, in his remonstrances. "She SILAS MARNER. 229 lias thriven as well as child can do with the weaver ; and he adopted her. There isn't such a pretty girl anywhere else in the parish, or one titter for the sta- tion we could give her. Where can be the likelihood of her being a curse to anybody?" "Yes, my dear Godfrey," said Nancy, who was sit- ting with her hands tightly clasped together, with yearning, regretful affection in her eyes. " The child may not turn out ill with the weaver. But, then, he didn't go to seek htr, as we should be doing. It will be wrong : I feel sure it will. Don't you remember what that lady we met at the Kqyston Baths told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only adopting I ever heard of; and the- child was transported when it was twenty-three. Dear Godfrey — don't ask me to do what I know is wrong : I should never be happy again. I know it's very hard for you — it's easier for me — but it's the will of Providence." It might seem singular that Nancy — with her relig- ious theory pieced together out of narrow social tra- ditions, fragments of church doctrine imperfectly un- derstood, and girlish reasonings on her small experi- ence — should have arrived by herself at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout peo- ple, whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite remote from her knowledge — singular, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barriers of system. Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred to him that Silas would rather part with his life than with Eppie. 230 SILAS MARNER. Surely the weaver would wish the best to the child he had taken so much trouble with, and would be glad that such good fortune should happen to her: she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be well provided for to the end of his life — provided for as the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate thing for people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of a man in a lower ? It seemed an eminently appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for desiring it. This was rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's relation to Eppie; but we must remember that many of the impressions which Godfrey was likely to gather concerning the labouring people around him would favour the idea that deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms and scant means ; and he had not had the op- portunity, even if he had had the power, of entering intimately into all that was exceptional in the weav- er's experience. It was only the want of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for God- frey deliberately to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness had outlived that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of him as a hus- band was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion. " I was right," she said to herself, when she had re- called all their scenes of discussion, "I feel I was right to say him nay, though it hurt me more than anything ; but how good Godfrey has been about it ! Many men would have been very angry with me for SILAS MARNER. 231 standing out against their wishes ; and they might have thrown out that they'd had ill luck in marrying me ; but Godfrey has never been the man to say me an unkind word. It's only what he can't hide — ev- erything seems so blank to him, I know; and the land — what a difference it 'ud make to him, when he goes to see after things, if he'd children growing up that he was doing it all for! But I won't murmur; and per- haps if he'd married a woman who'd have had chil- dren, she'd have vexed him in other ways." This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort ; and to give it greater strength, she laboured to make it impos- sible that any other wife should have had more per- fect tenderness. She had been forced to vex him by that one denial. Godfrey was not insensible to that loving effort, and did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her obstinacy. It was impossible to have lived with her fifteen years and not be aware that an unselfish clinging to the right, and a sincerity clear as the flower-born dew, were her main characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt this so strongly, that his own more wavering nature, too averse to facing difficulty to be unvaryingly simple and truthful, was kept in a certain awe of this gentle wife, who watched his looks with a yearning to obey them. It seemed to him im- possible that he should ever confess to her the truth about Eppie : she would never recover from the re- pulsion the story of his earlier' marriage would create, told to her now, after that long concealment. And the child, too, he thought, must become an object of repulsion: the very sight of her would be painful. The shock to Nancy's mingled pride and ignorance 232 SILAS MAKNEB. of the world's evil might even be too much for her delicate frame. Since he had married her with that secret on his heart, he must keep it there to the last. Whatever else he did, he could not make an irrepara- ble breach between himself and this long-loved wife. Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the absence of children from a hearth brightened by such a wife ? Why did his mind fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the sole reason why life was not thoroughly joyous to him ? I suppose that is the way with all men and women who reach middle age with- out the clear perception that life never can be thor- oughly joyous: under the vague dulness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction, seated musingly on a childless hearth, thinks with envy of the father whose return is greeted by young voices — seated at the meal where the little heads rise one above another like nursery plants, it sees a black care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the impulses by which men abandon freedom, and seek for ties, are surely nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey's case there were further reasons why his thoughts should be continually solicited by this one point in his lot : his conscience, never thoroughly easy about Eppie, now gave his childless home the aspect of a retribution ; and as the time passed on, under Nancy's refusal to adopt her, any retrieval of his er- ror became more and more difficult. On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since there had been any allusion to the subject be- tween them, and Nancy supposed that it was for ever buried. SILAS MARNER. 233 " I wonder if he'll mind it less or more as he gets older," she thought; "I'm afraid more. Aged people feel the miss of children : what would father do with- out Priscilla ? And if I die, Godfrey will be very lonely — not holding together with his brothers much. But I won't be over-anxious, and trying to make things out beforehand : I must do my best for the present." With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her reverie, and turned her eyes again towards the forsaken page. It had been forsaken longer than she imagined, for she was presently surprised by the ap- pearance of the servant with the tea-things. It was, in fact, a little before the usual time for tea ; but Jane had her reasons. "Is your master come into the yard, Jane?" " No 'm, he isn't," said Jane, with a slight empha- sis, of which, however, her mistress took no notice. "I don't know whether you've seen 'em, 'm," con- tinued Jane, after a pause, " but there's folks making haste all one way, afore the front window. I doubt something's happened. There's niver a man to be seen i' the yard, else I'd send and see. I've been up into the top attic, but there's no seeing anything for trees. I hope nobody's hurt, that's all." " no, I daresay there's nothing much the matter," said Nancy. " It's perhaps Mr. Snell's bull got out again as he did before." ¥** I wish he mayn't gore anybody, then, that's all," said Jane, not altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a few imaginary calamities. " That girl is always terrifying me," thought Nan- cy ; "I wish Godfrey would come in." 234 SILAS MARNER. She went to the front window and looked as far as she could see along the road, with an uneasiness which she felt to be childish, for there were now no such signs of excitement as Jane had spoken of, and God- frey would not be likely to return by the village road, but by the fields. She continued to stand, however, looking at the placid churchyard with the long shad- ows of the gravestones across the bright green hillocks, and at the glowing autumn colours of the Eectory trees beyond. Before such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is more distinctly felt — like a raven flapping its slow wing across the sunny air. Nancy wished more and more that Godfrey would come in. SILAS MAKSTEK. 235 CHAPTER XVIII. Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and Nancy felt that it was her husband. She turned from the window with gladness in her eyes, for the wife's chief dread was stilled. "Dear, I'm so thankful you're come," she said, go- ing towards him. " I began to get . . . ." She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat with trembling hands, and turned towards her with a pale face and a strange unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but saw her as part of a scene invisible to herself. She laid her hand on his arm, not daring to speak again ; but he left the touch un- noticed, and threw himself into his chair. Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when the door was closed again he exerted him- self to speak more distinctly. "Sit down, Nancy — there," he said, pointing to a chair opposite him. " I came back as soon as I could, to hinder anybody's telling you but me. I've had a great shock — but I care most about the shock it'll be to you." "It isn't father and Priscilla?" said Nancy, with quivering lips, clasping her hands together tightly on her lap. " No, it's nobody living," said Godfrey, unequal to 236 SILAS MAENEB. the considerate skill with* which he could have wished to make his revelation. " It's Dunstan — my brother Dunstan, that we lost sight of sixteen years ago. , We've found him — found his body — his skeleton." The deep dread Godfrey's look had created on Naffcy made her feel these words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness to hear what else he had to tell. He went on : " The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly — from the draining, I suppose ; and there he lies — has lain for sixteen years, wedged between two great stones. There's his watch and seals, and there's my gold-han- dled hunting-whip, with my name on: he took it away; without my knowing, the day he went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen." Godfrey paused ; it was not so easy to say what came next. "Do you think he drowned himself?" said Nancy, almost wondering that her husband should be so deeply shaken by what had happened all those years ago to an unloved brother, of whom worse things had been augured. " No, he fell in," said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, as if he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he added: "Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner." The blood rushed to Nancy's face and neck at this surprise and shame, for she had been bred up to re- gard even a distant kinship with crime as a dishonour. " O. Godfrey !" she said, with compassion in her tone, for she had immediately reflected that the dis- honour must be felt still more keenly by her husband. " There was the money in the pit," he continued — SILAS MARNER. 237 " all the weaver's money. Everything's being gath- ered up, and they're taking the skeleton to the Kain- bow. But I came back to tell you : there was no hin- dering it ; you must know." He was silent, looking on the ground for twq long minutes. Nancy would have said some words of com- fort under this disgrace, but she refrained, from an in- stinctive sense that there was something behind — that Godfrey- had something else to tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her face, and kept them fixed on her, as he said — "Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. I've lived with a secret on my mind, but I'll keep it from you no longer. I wouldn't have you know it by somebody else, and not by me — I wouldn't have you find it out after I'm dead. I'll tell you now. It's been ' I will' and ' I won't' with me all my life — I'll make sure of myself now." Nancy's utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the husband and wife met with awe in them, as at a crisis which suspended affection. 11 Nancy," said Godfrey, slowly, " when I married you, I hid something from you — something I ought to have told you. That woman Marner found dead in the snow — Eppie's mother — that wretched woman — was my wife : Eppie is my child." He paused, dreading the effect of his confession. But Nancy sat quite still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased to meet his. She was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, clasping her hands on her lap. . " You'll never think the same of me again," said 238 SILAS MARNER. Godfrey, after a little while, with some tremor in his voice. She was silent. "I oughtn't to have left the child unowned: I oughtn't to have kept it from you. But I couldn't bear to give you up, Nancy. I was led away into marrying her — I suffered for it." Still Nancy was silent, looking down ; and he al- most expected that she would presently get up and say she would go to her father's. How could she have any mercy for faults that must seem so black to her, with her simple, severe notions ? But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. There was no indignation in her voice — only deep regret. " Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we could have done some of our duty by the child. Do you think I'd have refused to take her in, if I'd known she was yours ?" At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He had not measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. But she spoke again, with more agitation. "And — O, Godfrey — if we'd had her from the first, if you'd taken to her as you ought, she'd have loved me for her mother, and you'd have been happier with me : I could better have bore my little baby dying, and our life might have been more like what we used to think it 'ud be." The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak. " But you wouldn't have married me then, Nancy, SILAS MARKER. 239 if I'd told you," said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self-reproach, to prove to himself that his con- duct had not been utter folly. " You may think you would now, but you wouldn't then. "With your pride and your father's, you'd have hated having anything to do with me after the talk there'd have been." " I can't say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. I should never have married anybody else. But I wasn't worth doing wrong for — nothing is in this world. Nothing is so good as it seems before- hand — not even our marrying wasn't, you see." There was a faint sad smile on Nancy's face as she said the last words. " I'm a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy," said Godfrey, rather tremulously. " Can you forgive me ever?" 11 The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey : you've made it up to me — you've been good to me for fifteen years. It's another you did the wrong to ; and I doubt it can never be made up for." " But we can take Eppie now," said Godfrey. " I won't mind the world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my life." " It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up," said Nancy, shaking her head sadly. li But it's your duty to acknowledge her and provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God Almighty to make her love me." 11 Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as soon as everything's quiet at the Stone-pits." 240 SILAS MARNER. CHAPTER XIX. Between eight and nine o'clock that evening, Ep- pie and Silas were seated alone in the cottage. After the great excitement the weaver had undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a longing for this quietude, and had even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had naturally lingered behind every one else, to leave him alone with his child. The ex- citement had not passed away : it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerable — when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of in- ward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men re- members the brightness of the eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over coarse features from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibra- tions through the heavy mortal frame — as if "beauty born of murmuring sound" had passed into the face of the listener. Silas's face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in his arm-chair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn her own chair towards his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his hands, while she looked up at him. On the table near them, lit by a candle, lay the recovered gold — the old long-loved gold, ranged SILAS MAENEE. 241 in orderly heaps, as Silas used to range it in the days it was his only joy. He had been telling her how he used to count it every night, and how his soul was utterly desolate till she was sent to him. " At first, I'd a sort o' feeling come across me now and then," he was saying in a subdued tone, "as if you might be changed into the gold again ; for some- times, turn my head which way I would, I seemed to see the gold ; and I thought I should be glad if I could feel it, and find it was come back. But that didn't last long. After a bit, I should have thought it was a curse come again, if it had drove you from me, for I'd got to feel the need o' your looks and your voice and the touch o' your little fingers. You didn't know then, Eppie, when you were such a little un — you didn't know what your old father Silas felt for you." "But I know now, father," said Eppie. "If it hadn't been for you, they'd have taken me to the work- house, and there'd have been nobody to love me." "Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you hadn't been sent to save me, I should ha' gone to the grave in my misery. The money was taken away from me in time ; and you see it's been kept — kept till it was wanted for you. It's wonderful — our life is wonderful." Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. " It takes no hold of me now," he said, pon- deringly — " the money doesn't. I wonder if it ever could again — I doubt it might, if I lost you, Eppie. I might come to think I was forsaken again, and lose the feeling that God was good to me." L 242 SILAS MARNEK. At that moment there was a knocking at the door ; and Eppie was obliged to rise without answering Si- las. Beautiful she looked, with the tenderness of gath- ering tears in her eyes, and a slight flush on her cheeks, as she stepped to open the door. The flush deepened when she saw Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass. She made her little rustic curtsy, and held the door wide for them to enter. "We're disturbing you very late, my dear," said Mrs. Cass, taking Eppie's hand, and looking in her face with an expression of anxious interest and ad- miration. Nancy herself was pale and tremulous. Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to stand against Silas, opposite to them. " "Well, Marner;" said Godfrey, trying to speak with perfect firmness, "it's a great comfort to me to see you with your money again, that you've been deprived of so many years. It was one of my family did you the wrong — the more grief to me — and I feel bound to make up to you for it in every way. Whatever I can do for you will be nothing but paying a debt, even if I looked no farther than the robbery. But there are other things I'm beholden, shall be beholden to you for, Marner." Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed be- tween him and his wife that the subject of his father- hood should be approached very carefully, and that, if possible, the disclosure should be reserved for the future, so that it might be made to Eppie gradually. Nancy had urged this, because she felt strongly the painful light in which Eppie must inevitably see the relation between her father and mother. SILAS MARNER. 243 Silas, always ill at ease when he was being spoken to by " betters," such as Mr. Cass — tall, powerful, florid men, seen chiefly on horseback — answered with some constraint — " Sir, I've a deal to thank you for a'ready. As for the robbery, I count it no loss to me. And if I did, you couldn't help it : you aren't answerable for it." " You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can ; and I hope you'll let me act according to my own feeling of what's just. I know you're easily contented : you've been a hard-working man all your life." "Yes, sir, yes," said Marner, meditatively. "I should ha' been bad off without my work : it was what I held by when everything else was gone from me." " Ah," said Godfrey, applying Marner's words sim- ply to his bodily wants, " it was a good trade for you in this country, because there's been a great deal of linen-weaving to be done. But you're getting rather past such close work, Marner ; it's time you laid by and had some rest. You look a good deal pulled down, though you're not an old man, are you ?" "Fifty -five, as near as I can say, sir," said Silas. " 0, why, you may live thirty years longer — look at old Macey ! And that money on the table, after all, is but little. It won't go far either way — whether it's put out to interest, or you were to live on it as long as it would last : it wouldn't go far if you'd no- body to keep but yourself, and you've had two to keep for a good many years now." " Eh, sir," said Silas, unaffected by anything God- frey was saying, "I'm in no fear o' want. We shall do 244 SILAS MARKER. very well— Bppie and me '11 do well enough. There's few working-folks have got so much laid by as that. I don't know what it is to gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a deal — almost too much. And as for us, it's lit- tle we want." " Only the garden, father," said Eppie, blushing up to the ears the moment after. "You love a garden, do you, my dear?" said Nancy, thinking that this turn in the point of view might help her husband. "We should agree in that: I give a deal of time to the garden." " Ah, there's plenty of gardening at the Ked House," said Godfrey, surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a proposition which had seemed so easy to him in the distance. "You've done a good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen years. It 'ud be a great comfort to you to see her well provided for, wouldn't it? She looks blooming and healthy, but not fit for any hardships : she doesn't look like a strapping girl come of working parents. You'd like to see her taken care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady of her ; she's more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she might come to have in a few years' time." A slight flush came over Marner's face, and disap- peared, like a passing gleam. Eppie was simply won- dering Mr. Cass should talk so about things that seem- ed to have nothing to do with reality ; but Silas was hurt and uneasy. "I don't take your meaning, sir," he answered, not having words at command to express the mingled feelings with which he had heard Mr. Cass's words. SILAS HARNER. 245 "Well, my meaning is this, Marner," said Godfrey, determined to come to the point. " Mrs. Cass and I, you know, have no children — nobody to benefit by our good home and everything else we have — more than enough for ourselves. And we should like to have somebody in the place of a daughter to us — we should like to have Eppie, and treat her in every way as our own child. It would be a great comfort to you in your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made in that way, after you have been at the trouble of bring- ing her up so well. And it's right you should have every reward for that. And Eppie, I'm sure, will al- ways love you and be grateful to you: she'd come and see you very often, and we should all be on the look-out to do everything we could towards making you comfortable." A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and that are like- ly to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head, and let her hand rest against it caressingly: she felt him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when Mr. Cass had ended — powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike pain- ful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly — "Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr. and Mrs. Cass." 246 SILAS MARNER. Eppie took her hand from her father's head, and came forward a step. Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness this time : the sense that her father was in doubt and suffering banished that sort of self- consciousness. She dropped a low curtsy, first to Mrs. Cass and then to Mr. Cass, and said — " Thank you, ma'am — thank you, sir. But I can't leave my father, nor own anybody nearer than him. And I don't want to be a lady — thank you all the same" — (here Eppie dropped another curtsy). "I couldn't give up the folks I've been used to." Eppie's lip began to tremble a little at the last words. She retreated to her father's chair again, and held him round the neck; while Silas, with a sub- dued sob, put up his hand to grasp hers. The tears were in Nancy's eyes, but her sympathy with Eppie was, naturally, divided with distress on her husband's account. She dared not speak, won- dering what was going on in her husband's mind. Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when we encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had been full of his own penitence, and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the time was left to him ; he was possessed with all-important feelings, that were to lead to a predetermined course of action which he had fixed on as the right, and he was not prepared to enter with lively appreciation into other people's feelings, counteracting his virtuous resolves. The agitation with which he spoke again was not quite unmixed with anger. " But I have a claim on you, Eppie — the strongest of all claims. It is my duty, Marner, to own Eppie SILAS MARKER. 247 as my child, and provide for her. She is my own child — her mother was my wife. I have a natural claim on her that must stand before every other." Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. Silas, on the contrary, who had been relieved, by Eppie's answer, from the dread lest his mind should be in opposition to hers, felt the spirit of resistance in him set free, and not without a touch of parental fierceness. " Then, sir," he answered, with an accent of bitterness that had been silent in him since the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished — " then, sir, why didn't you say so sixteen year ago, and claim her before I'd come to love her, i'stead o 7 coming to take her from me now, when you might as well take the heart out o' my body? God gave her to me because you turned your back upon her, and He looks upon her as mine : you've no right to her ! "When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to them as take it in." "I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I've re- pented of my conduct in that matter," said Godfrey, who could not help feeling the edge of Silas's words. "I'm glad to hear it, sir," said Marner, with gather- ing excitement ; " but repentance doesn't alter what's been going on for sixteen years. Your coming now and saying ' I'm her father' doesn't alter the feelings inside us. It's me she's been calling her father ever since she could say the word." "But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, Marner," said Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the weaver's direct truth-speaking. "It isn't as if she was to be taken quite away from you, so that you'd 248 SILAS MARNER. never see her again. She'll be very near you, and come to see you very often. She'll feel just the same towards you." "Just the same?" said Marner, more bitterly than ever. "How'll she feel just the same for me as she does now, when we eat o' the same bit, and drink o' the same cup, and think o' the same things from one day's end to another? Just the same? that's idle talk. You'd cut us i' two." Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy of Marner's simple words, felt rather angry again. It seemed to him that the weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice) to oppose what was undoubtedly for Eppie's welfare; and he felt himself called upon, for her sake, to assert his authority. " I should have thought, Marner," he said, severely — "I should have thought your affection for Eppie would have made you rejoice in what was for her good, even if it did call upon you to give up some- thing. You ought to remember that your own life is uncertain, and that she's at an age now when her lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in her father's home: she may marry some low working-man, and then, whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make her well off. You're put- ting yourself in the way of her welfare ; and though I'm sorry to hurt you after what you've done, and what I've left undone, I feel now it's my duty to in- sist on taking care of my own daughter. I want to do my duty." SILAS MAKNER. 249 It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was most deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey's. Thought had been very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old long- loved father and this new, unfamiliar father, who had suddenly come to fill the place of that black feature- less shadow which had held the ring and placed it on her mother's finger. Her imagination had darted backward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this revealed fatherhood implied ; and there were words in Godfrey's last speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite. Not that these thoughts, either of past or future, determined her resolution — that was determined by the feelings which vibrated to every word Silas had uttered ; but they raised, even apart from these feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and the newly-revealed father. Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in con- science, and alarmed lest Godfrey's accusation should be true — lest he should be raising his own will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many moments he was mute, struggling for the self-conquest necessary to the uttering of the difficult words. They came out trem- ulously. " I'll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child. I'll hinder nothing." Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections, shared her husband's view, that Mar- ner was not justified in his wish to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She felt that it was a very hard trial for the poor weaver, but Nancy's code allowed no question that a father by blood must L2 250 SILAS MARNER. have a claim above that of any foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous circumstances and the privileges of " respectability," could not enter into the pleasures which early nurture and habit con- nect with all the little aims and efforts of the poor who are born poor : to her mind, Eppie, in being restored to her birthright, was entering on a too long withheld but unquestionable good. Hence she heard Silas's last words with relief, and thought, as Godfrey did, that their wish was achieved. " Eppie, my dear," said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, not without some embarrassment, under the sense that she was old enough to judge him, "it'll al- ways be our wish that you should show your love and gratitude to one who's been a father to you so many years, and we shall want to help you to make him comfortable in every way. But we hope you'll come to love us as well ; and though I haven't been what a father should have been to you all these years, I wish to do the utmost in my power for you for the rest of my life, and provide for you as my only child. And you'll have the best of mothers in my wife : that'll be a blessing you haven't known since you were old enough to know it." " My dear, you'll be a treasure to me," said Nancy, in her gentle voice. "We shall want for nothing when we have our daughter." Eppie did not come forward and curtsy, as she had done before. She held Silas's hand in hers, and grasped it firmly — it was a weaver's hand, with a palm and finger-tips that were sensitive to such pressure — while she spoke with colder decision than before. SILAS MAENEE. 251 " Thank you, ma'am — thank yon, sir — for your of- fers ; they're very great, and far above my wish. For I should have no delight i' life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at home, a-thinking of me and feeling lone. "We've been used to be happy together every day, and I can't think o' no happiness without him. And he says he'd nobody i' the world till I was sent to him, and he'd have nothing when I was gone. And he's took care of me and loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him and me." "But you must make sure, Eppie," said Silas, in a low voice — "you must make sure as you won't ever be sorry, because you've made your choice to stay among poor folks, and with poor clothes and things, when you might ha' had everything o' the best." His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened to Eppie's words of faithful affection. " I can never be sorry, father," said Eppie. " I shouldn't know what to think on or to wish for with fine things about me, as I haven't been used to. And it 'ud be poor work for me to put on things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a. place at church, as 'ud make them as I'm fond of think me unfitting company for 'em. "What could /care for then?" Nancy looked at Godfrey with a pained question- ing glance. But his eyes were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the end of his stick, as if he were pondering on something absently. She thought there was a word which might perhaps come better from her lips than from his. 252 SILAS MARNER. " What you say is natural, my dear child — it's nat- ural you should cling to those who've brought you up," she said, mildly ; " but there's a duty you owe to your lawful father. There's perhaps something to be given up on more sides than one. When your father opens his home to you, I think it's right you shouldn't turn your back on it." "I can't feel as I've got any father but one," said Eppie, impetuously, while the tears gathered. "I've allays thought of a little home where he'd sit i' the corner, and I should fend and do everything for him : I can't think o' no other home. I wasn't brought up to be a lady, and I can't turn my mind to it. I like the working folks, and their houses, and their ways. And," she ended passionately, while the tears fell, " I'm promised to marry a working man, as '11 live with father, and help me to take care of him." Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and a smarting dilation of the eyes. This frustration of a purpose towards which he had set out under the exalted consciousness that he was about to compen- sate in some degree for the greatest demerit of his life, made him feel the air of the room stifling. "Let us go," he said, in an under tone. "We won't talk of this any longer now," said Nan- cy, rising. " We're your well-wishers, my dear — and yours too, Marner. We shall come and see you again. It's getting late now." In this way she covered her husband's abrupt de- parture, for Godfrey had gone straight to the door, un- able to say more. SILAS MARNER. 253 CHAPTER XX. Nancy and Godfrey walked home tinder the star- light in silence. When they entered the oaken par- lour, Godfrey threw himself into his chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and shawl, and stood on the hearth near her husband, unwilling to leave him even for a few minutes, and yet fearing to utter any word lest it might jar on his feeling. At last God- frey turned his head towards her, and their eyes met, dwelling in that meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose. But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers within it, he drew her towards him, and said — "That's ended!" She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his side, ("Yes, I'm afraid we must give up the hope of having her for a daughter. It wouldn't be right to want to force her to come to us against her will. We can't alter her bringing up and what's come of it."/' "No," said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in contrast with his usually careless and unem- 254 SILAS MA.RNER. phatic speech — "there's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing — it's too late now. ^Marner was in the right in what he said about a man's turn- ing away a blessing from his door: it falls to some- body else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nan- cy — I shall pass for childless now against my wish.'^) Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while she asked — u You won't make it known, then, about Eppie's being your daughter ?" "No — where would be the good to anybody? — only harm. (jE must do what I can for her in the state of life she choosesl I must see who it is she's think- ing of marrying.' 3 \ " If it won't do any good to make the thing known," said Nancy, who thought she might now allow herself 1 the relief of entertaining a feeling which she had tried to silence before, "I should be very thankful for father and Priscilla never to be troubled with know- ing what was done in the past, more than about Dun- sey : it can't be helped, their knowing that." " I shall put it in my will — I think I shall put it in my will. I shouldn't like to leave anything to be found out, like this of Dunsey," said Godfrey, medita- tively. " But I can't see anything but difficulties that 'ud come from telling it now. I must do what I can to make her happy in her own way. I've a notion," he added, after a moment's pause, " it's Aaron Win- throp she meant she was engaged to. I remember seeing him with her and Marner going away from church." SILAS MAENER. 255 u Well, he's very sober and industrious," said Nan- cy, trying to view the matter as cheerfully as pos- sible. Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he looked up at Nancy sorrowfully, and said — M She's a very pretty, nice girl, isn't she, Nancy?" " Yes, dear ; and with just your hair and eyes : I wondered it had never struck me before." " I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my being her father ; I could see a change in her manner after that." " She couldn't bear to think of not looking on Mar- ner as her father," said Nancy, not wishing to confirm t u hex husband's painful impression. . ^jj^ si* She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. She thinks me worse than I am. But she I must think it : she can never know all. It's part of my punishment, Nancy, for my daughter to dislike me. I should never have got into that trouble if I'd >f^ been true to you — if I hadn't been a fool. I'd no i^\ right to expect anything but evil could come of that marriage, and when I shirked doing a father's part too." Nancy was silent : her spirit of rectitude would not let her try to soften the edge of what she felt to be a just compunction. He spoke again after a little while, but the tone was rather changed : there was tender- ness mingled with the previous self-reproach. fyrf f 11 And I got you, Nancy, in spite of all ; and yet I've been grumbling and uneasy because I hadn't some- thing else — as if I deserved it.") " You've never been wanting to me, Godfrey," said ' 256 SILAS MARNER. Nancy, with quiet sincerity. " My only trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself to the lot that's been given us." " Well, perhaps it isn't too late to mend a bit there. Though it is too late to mend some things, say what they will." SILAS MARNER. 257 CHAPTEE XXL The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were ceated at their breakfast, he said to her — " Eppie, there's a thing I've had on my mind to do this two year, and now the money's been brought back to us, we can do it. I've been turning it over and over in the night, and I think we'll set out to-morrow, while the fine days last. We'll leave the house and everything for your godmother to take care on, and we'll make a little bundle o' things and set out." "Where to go, daddy?" said Eppie, in much sur- prise. "To my old country — to the town where I was born — up Lantern Yard. I want to see Mr. Paston, the minister: something may ha' come out to make 'em know I was innicent o' the robbery. And Mr. Paston was a man with a deal o' light — I want to speak to him about the drawing o' the lots. And I should like to talk to him about the religion o' this country-side, for I partly think he doesn't know on it." Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only of wonder and delight at seeing a strange country, but also of coming back to tell Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much wiser than she was about most things — it would be rather pleasant to have this little advantage over him. Mrs. Winthrop, though possessed with a dim fear of dangers attend- 258 SILAS MARNER. ant on so long a journey, and requiring many assur- ances that it would not take them out of the region of carrier's carts and slow waggons, was nevertheless well pleased that Silas should revisit his own country, and find out if he had been cleared from that false ac- cusation. " You'd be easier in your mind for the rest o' your life, Master Marner," said Dolly — "that you would. And if there's any light to be got up the yard as you talk on, we've need of it i' this world, and I'd be glad on it myself, if you could bring it back." So, on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Ep- pie, in their Sunday clothes, with a small bundle tied in a blue linen handkerchief, were making their way through the streets of a great manufacturing town. Silas, bewildered by the changes thirty years had brought Over his native place, had stopped several persons in succession to ask them the name of this town, that he might be sure he \yas not under a mis- take about it. " Ask for Lantern Yard, father — ask the gentleman with the tassels on his shoulders a-standing at the shop-door ; he isn't in a hurry like the rest," said Ep- pie, in some distress at her father's bewilderment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the noise, the movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent faces. " Eh, my child, he won't know anything about it," said Silas ; " gentlefolks didn't ever go up the yard. But happen somebody can tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where the jail is. I know the way out o' that as if I'd seen it yesterday." With some difficulty, after many turnings and new SILAS MARNER. 259 inquiries, they reached Prison Street ; and the grim walls of the jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas's memory, cheered him with the certi- tude, which no assurance of the town's name had hith- erto given him, that he was in his native place. " Ah," he said, drawing a long breath, "there's the jail, Eppie ; that's just the same : I aren't afraid now. It's the third turning on the left hand from the jail doors : that's the way we must go." 11 0, what a dark ugly place !" said Eppie. " How it hides the sky! It's worse than the Workhouse. I'm glad you don't live in this town now, father. Is Lantern Yard like this street?" "My precious child," said Silas, smiling, "it isn't a big street like this. I never was easy i' this street myself, but I was fond o' Lantern Yard. . The shops here are all altered, I think — I can't make 'em out ; but I shall know the turning, because it's the third." " Here it is," he said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came to a narrow alley. " And then we must go to the left again, and then straight for'ard for a bit, up Shoe Lane; and then we shall be at the entry next to the o'erhanging window, where there's the nick in the road for the water to run. Eh, I can see it all." " father, I'm like as if I was stifled," said Eppie. " I couldn't ha' thought as any folks lived i' this way, so close together. How pretty the Stone-pits 'ull look when we get back !" "It looks comical to me, child, now — and smells bad. I can't think as it usened to smell so." Here and there a sallow begrimed face looked out 260 SILAS MARNER. from a gloomy doorway at the strangers, and increased Eppie's uneasiness, so that it was a longed-for relief when they issued from the alleys into Shoe Lane, where there was a broader strip of sky. "Dear heart!" said Silas, "why, there's people coming out o' the Yard as if they'd been to chapel at this time o' day — a weekday noon !" Suddenly he started and stood still with a look of distressed amazement that alarmed Eppie. They were before an opening in front of a large factory, from which men and women were streaming for their mid- day meal. "Father," said Eppie, clasping his arm, "what's the matter?" But she had to speak again and again before Silas could answer. " It's gone, child," he said, at last, in strong agita- tion — " Lantern Yard's gone. It must ha' been here, because here's the house with the o'erhanging window — I know that — it's just the same ; but they've made this new opening ; and see that big factory ! It's all gone — chapel and all." "Come into that little brushshop and sit down, father — they'll let you sit down," said Eppie, always on the watch lest one of her father's strange attacks should come on. "Perhaps the people can tell you all about it." But neither from the brushmaker, who had come to Shoe Lane only ten years ago, when the factory was already built, nor from any other source within his reach, could Silas learn anything of the old Lantern Yard friends, or of Mr. Paston, the minister. SILAS MARNER. 261 "The old place is all swep' away," Silas said to Dolly Winthrop on the night of his return — "the lit- tle graveyard and everything. The old home's gone; I've no home but this now. I shall never know whether they got at the truth o' the robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha' given me any light about the drawing o' the lots. It's dark to me, Mrs. Winthrop, that is ; I doubt it'll be dark to the last." "Well, yes, Master Marner," said Dolly, who sat with a placid listening face, now bordered by grey hairs ; "I doubt it may. It's the will o' Them above as a many things should be dark to us; but there's some things as I've never felt i' the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i' the day's work. You were hard done by that once, Master Marner, and it seems as you'll never know the rights of it ; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me." "No," said Silas, "no; that doesn't hinder. Since the time the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by ; and now she says she'll never leave me. I think I shall trusten till I die." 262 SILAS MARNER. CONCLUSION. There was one time of the year which was held in Eaveloe to be especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great lilacs and laburnums in the old- fashioned gardens showed their golden and purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls of fragrant milk. People were not so busy then as they must become when the full cheese-making and the mowing had set in ; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress could be worn with comfort and seen to advantage. Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide intervals ; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at once. Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her hus- SILAS MARKER. 263 band's arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father Silas. "You won't be giving me away, father," she had said before they went to church ; " you'll only be tak- ing Aaron to be a son to you." Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband : and there ended the little bridal procession. There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Pris- cilla Lammeter was glad that she and her father had happened to drive up to the door of the Eed House just in time to see this pretty sight. They had come to keep Nancy company to-day, because Mr. Cass had had to go away to Lytherly, for special reasons. That seemed to be a pity, for otherwise he might have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood certainly would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had ordered at the Kainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the "Weaver who had been wronged by one of his own family. " I could ha' wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child like that and bring her up," said Priscilla to her father as they sat in the gig ; "I should ha' had something young to think of then, besides the lambs and the calves." " Yes, my dear, yes," said Mr. Lammeter ; " one feels that as one gets older. Things look dim to old folks : they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be." Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister, and the wedding group had passed on beyond the Red House to the humbler part of the village. Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. 264 SILAS MARNER. Macey, who had been set in his arm-chair outside his own door, would expect some special notice as they passed, since he was too old to be at the wedding- feast. " Mr. Macey's looking for a word from us," said Dolly ; " he'll be hurt if we pass him and say nothing — and him so racked with rheumatiz." So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. He had looked forward to the occasion, and had his premeditated speech. 11 Well, Master Marner," he said, in a voice that quavered a good deal, " I've lived to see my words come true. I was the first to say there was no harm in you, though your looks might be agin' you ; and I was the first to say you'd get your money back. And it's nothing but rightful as you should. And I'd ha' said the 'Amens,' and willing, at the holy matrimo- ny ; but Tookey's done it a good while now, and I hope you'll have none the worse luck." In the open yard before the Kainbow, the party of guests were already assembled, though it was still nearly an hour before the appointed feast-time. But by this means they could not only enjoy the slow ad- vent of their pleasure ; they had also ample leisure to talk of Silas Marner's strange history, and arrive by due degrees at the conclusion that he had brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a lone motherless child. Even the farrier did not negative this sentiment : on the contrary, he took it up as pe- culiarly his own, and invited any hardy person pres- ent to contradict him. But he met with no contra- diction ; and all deferences among the company were SILAS MARNER. 265 merged in a general agreement with Mr. Snail's senti- ment, that when a man had deserved his good luck, it was the part of his neighbours to wish him joy. As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised in the Eainbow yard ; and Ben Winthrop, whose jokes had retained their acceptable flavour, found it agreeable to turn in there and receive con- gratulations ; not requiring the proposed interval of quiet at the Stone-pits before joining the company. Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever ex- pected there now ; and in other ways there had been alterations at the expense of Mr. Cass, the landlord, to suit Silas's larger family. For he and Eppie had de- clared that they would rather stay at the Stone-pits than go to any new home. The garden was fenced with stones on two sides, but in front there was an open fence, through which the flowers shone with answering gladness, as the four united people came within sight of them. "0 father," said Eppie, "what a pretty home ours is ! I think nobody could be happier than we are." M THE END. Mr. Motley, the American historian of the United Netherlands— we owe him English homage. — London Times. " As interesting as a romance, and as reliable as a proposition of Euclid." History of The United Netherlands. FBOM THE I>EATH OF WILLIAM THE SILENT TO THE SYNOD OF DOBT. WITH A FULL VIEW OF THE ENGLISH-DUTCH 6TBCGGLE AGAINST STAIN, AND OF THE OBIGIN AND DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH ARMADA. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D.C.L., Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, Author of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic." With Portraits and Map. 2 vols. Svo, Muslin, $4 00; Sheep, $4 50; Half Calf, $6 00. Critical Notices. His living and truthful picture of events.— Quarterly Review (London), Jan., 1861. Fertile as the present age has been in historical works of the highest merit, none of them can be ranked above these volumes in the grand qnalities of interest, accuracy, and truth. — Edinburgh Quarterly Revieic, Jan., 1S61. Thi3 noble work Westminster Review (London). One of the most fascinating as well as important histories of the century Cor. N. Y. Evening Post. The careful study of these volumes will infallibly afford a feast both rich and rare Baltimore Republican. Already takes a rank among standard work3 of history.— London Critic. Mr. Motley's prose epic. — London Spectator. Its pages are pregnant with instruction — London Literary Gazette. We may profit by almost every page of his narrative. All the topics which agi- tate us now are more or less vividly presented in the History of the United Nether- lands New York Times. Bears on every page marks of the same vigorous mind that produced "The Rise of the Dutch Republic ;" but the new work is riper, mellower, and though equally racy of the soil, softer flavored. The inspiring idea which breathes through Mr. Motley's histories and colors the whole texture of his narrative, is the grandeur of that memorable struggle in the 16th century by which the human mind broke the thraldom of religious intolerance and achieved its independence — The World, N. Y. The name of Motley now stands in the very front rank of living historians. Hi3 Dittch Republic took the world by surprise ; but the favorable verdict then given is now only the more deliberately confirmed on the publication of the continued story under the title of the His'ory of the United Netherlands. All the nerve, and power, and substance of juicy life are there, lending a charm to every page. — Church Journal, N. 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This work bears on its face the evidences of scholarship and research. The arrangement is clear and effective ; the style energetic, lively, and often brilliant * * * Mr. Motley's instructive volumes will, we trust, have a circulation commen- surate with their interest and value.— Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review. To the illustration of this most interesting period Mr. Motley has brought the matured powers of a vigorous and brilliant mind, and the abundant fruits of pa- tient and judicious study and deep reflection. The result is, one of the most important contributions to h'~torical literature that have been made in this coun- try.— North American Review. We would conclude this notice by earnestly recommending our readers to pro- cure for themselves this truly great and admirable work, by the production of which the auther has conferred no less honor upon his country than he has won praise and fame for himself, and than which, we can assure them, they can find nothing more attractive or interesting within the compass of modern literature. — Evangelical Review. It is not often that we have the pleasure of commending to the attention of the lover of books a work of such extraordinary aud unexceptionable excellence as this one. — Universalist Quarterly Review. There are an elevation and a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of grouping and of portraiture, which invest the subject with the attractions of a living and stirring episode in the grand historic drama. — Southern Methodist Quarterly Review. The author writes with a genial glow and love of his subject— Presbyterian Quarterly Review. Mr. Motley is a sturdy Republican and a hearty Protestant His style is live- ly and picturesque, and his work is an honor and an, important accession to our national literature. — Church Review. Mr. Motley's work is an important one, the result of profound research, sincere convictions, sound principles, and manly sentiments; and even those who are most familiar with the history of the period will find in it a fresh and vivid ad- dition to their previous knowledge. It does honor to American literature, and would do honor to the literature of any country in the world. — Edinburgh Re- view. A serious chasm in English historical literature has been (by this book) very remarkably filled. * * * A history as complete as industry and genius can make it now lies before us, of the first twenty years of the revolt of the United Prov. inces. * * * All the essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. His mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic description no modern historian, except, perhaps, Mr. Carlyle, surpasses him, and in analy- sis of character he is elaborate and distinct— Westminster Review. MOTLEY'S RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC It is a work of real historical value, the result of accurate criticism, written in a liberal spirit, and from first to last deeply interesting.— Athenaeum. The style is excellent, clear, vivid, eloquent; and the industry with which original sources have been investigated, and through which new light has been shed over perplexed incidents and characters, entitles Mr. Motley to a high rank in the literature of an age peculiarly rich in history.— North British Review. It abounds in new information, and, as a first work, commands a very cordial recognition, not merely of the promise it gives, but of the extent and importance of the labor actually performed on it— London Examiner. Mr. Motley's "History" is a work of which any country might be proud.— Press (London). Mr. Motley's History will be a standard book of reference in historical litera- ture.— London Literary Gazette. Mr. Motley has searched the whole range of historical documents necessary to the composition of his work.— London Leader. This is really a great work. It belongs to the class of books in which we range our Grotes, Milmans, Merivales, and Macaulays, as the glories of English literature in the department of history. * * * Mr. Motley's gifts as a historical writer are among the highest and rarest. — Nonco?iformut (London). Mr. Motley's volumes will well repay perusal. * * * For his learning, his liberal tone, and his generous enthusiasm, we heartily commend him, and bid him good 6peed for the remainer of his interesting and heroic narrative. — Saturday Review. The story is a noble one, and is worthily treated. * * * Mr. Motley has had the patience to unravel, with unfailing perseverance, the thousand intricate plots of the adversaries of the Prince of Orange ; but the details and the literal extracts which he has derived from original documents, and transferred to his pages, give a truthful color and a picturesque effect, which are especially charming. — London Daily News. M. Lothrop Motley dans son magnifique tableau de la formation de notre Re- publique. — G. Geoex Vas Peinsteeeb. Our accomplished countryman, Mr. J. Lothrop Motley, who, during the last five years, for the better prosecution of his labors, has established his residence in the neighborhood of the scenes of his narrative. No one acquainted with the fine powers of mind possessed by this scholar, and the earnestness with which he has devoted himself to the task, can doubt that he will do full justice to his im- portant but difficult subject — W. H. Peescoit. The production of such a work as this astonishes, while it gratifies the pride of the American reader. — N. Y. Observer. The " Rise of the Dutch Republic" at once, and by acclamation, takes its place by the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," as a work which, wheth- er for research, substance, or style, will never be superseded.— N. Y. Albion. A work upon which all who read the English language may congratulate themselves.— New Yorker Handels Zeitung. Mr. Motley's place is now (alluding to this book) with Hallam and Lord Ma- hon, Alison and Macaulay in the Old Countiy, and with Washington Irving, Prescott, and Bancroft in this.— N. Y. Times. The authoritv, in the English tongue, for the history of the period and people to which it refers.— .V. Y. Courier and Enquirer. This work at once places the author on the list of American historians which has been so signally illustrated by the names of Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, and Hildreth. — Boston Times. The work is a noble one, and a most desirable acquisition to our historical lit- erature.— Mobile Advertiser. . Such a work is an honor to its author, to his country, and to the age in which it was written. — Ohio Farmer. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. Haepeb & Bbothers will send the above Work by Mail (postage paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of the Money. HISTORY OF TIIB UMTED STATES OF AMERICA. By BICHAED HILDKETH. First Series. — From the First Settlement of the Country to the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. 3 vols. 8vo, Muslin, $6 00 ; Sheep, $6 75 ; Half Calf, $7 50. Second Series.— From the Adoption of the Federal Constitution to the End of the Sixteenth Congress. 3 vols. 8vo, Muslin, $G 00; Sheep, $6 75 ; Half Calf, $7 50. The first attempt at a complete history of the United States. The reader who desires to inform himself in all the particulars, military or political, of the American Revolution, will find that they have been scrupulously collected for him by Mr. Hildreth.— London Athenceiim. It has condensed into consecutive narrative the substance of hundreds of volumes. — London Literary Gazette. The history of the Revolution is clearly and succinctly told. — N. A. Review. Mr. Hildreth' s sources of information have evidently been ample and various, and intelligently examined, his materials arranged with a just idea of their im- portance in the story, while his judgments are well considered, unbiassed, and reliable. His style is clear, forcible, and sententious. — Christian Register. Mr. Hildreth is a very concise, vigorous, and impartial writer. His entire history is very accurate and interesting, and well worthy a place in every Amer- ican library.— Louisville Journal. He is laborious, conscientious, and accurate. As a methodical and very full narrative, its value is undoubted. — New Orleans Bee. The calmness and ability with which he has presented his narrative will give his work rank among the standard histories of the country. — Watchman and Observer. * * We have, therefore, read his book with distrust. But we are bound in candor to say that it seems to us valuable and very fair. Mr. Hildreth has con- fined himself to, as far as possible, a dispassionate collection of facts from the documents he has consulted and copied, and his work fills a void that has pensi- bly been felt in private libraries. As a documentary history of the United States, we are free to commend it. — JV. Y. Freeman's Journal. Mr. Hildreth has rendered an essential and permanent service.— Providence Daily Journal. The volumes will be regarded as indispensable— it will take its place as a standard work. The author's style is dignified, perspicuous, and vivacious. — Church Review. The work is very complete. The marginal dates, the two indexes, and run- ning heads at the tops of the pages, render it very convenient for reference, points \rhich scholars will find all important for utility.— Newark Sentinel of Freedom. HILDEETH'S HISTOEY OF THE UNITED STATES. We should like to know what other book upon American history, or even upon any limited portion of it, presents any thing like the same distinctness of view, or can at all compete with it in that "lucid order" which is one of the first mer- its of every historical work. — Boston Atlas. His work fills a want, and is therefore most welcome. Its positive merits, in addition to those we have before mentioned, are impartiality, steadiness of view, clear appreciation of character, and, in poiut of style, a terseness and con- ciseness not unlike Tacitus, with not a little, too, of Tacitean vigor of thought, stern sense of justice, sharp irony, and profound wisdom. — Methodist Quarterly Review. It occupies a space which has not yet been filled, and exhibits characteristics both of design and of composition, which entitle it to a distinguished place among the most important productions of American genius and scholarship. "VVe welcome it as a simple, faithful, lucid, and elegant narrative of the great events of American history. It is not written in illustration of any favorite theory, it is not the expression of any ideal system, but an honest endeavor to present the facts in question in the pure, uncolored light of truth and reality. The impartiality, good judgment, penetration, and diligent research of the au- thor are conspicuous in its composition. — X. Y. Tribune. In our judgment, this is the ablest, best, and most judicious popular history of the United States that has yet appeared. It will be a standard book on American history, and will not fail to secure a high reputation as a writer to its modest and unpretending author. — Washington Union. This work is a valuable addition to our historical literature. It is the fruit of wide research and hard labor. It has those features of severe simplicity and truthfulness which will render it an enduring legacy to the future. — Christian Watchman. Mr. Hildreth's work will be a standard of reference for the student of Ameri- can history, and will become a favorite in proportion as it is known. — Nat. Era. His narrative is lncid and succinct, his facts carefully ascertained and skill- fully grouped, and his conclusions on all mooted questions are ably sustained and impartially weighed. — Sew Orleans Bee. , The most valuable work of the kind yet issued. It presents, in a clear, grace- ful, and forcible style, a full and faithful picture of the country from its first settlement down to the end of the Sixteenth Congress. It is marked no less by its completeness than its accuracy and the beauty of its narrative. — Troy Daily Whig. In a most graphic, terse, and elegant style, it gives the history of each state, with its institutions, progress, and enterprise, civil, commercial, and agricul- tural, which makes the book a valuable addendum to the historical literatnre of the great republic— St. John's Morning News. No better chronicle of the more recent periods of our history has been given. — Albany Evening Journal. The prevailing characteristic of Hildreth's history is its stern and inflexible impartiality. — Boston Journal. The author has shown a most commendable industry.— Baltimore Patriot. The chief merits of Mr. Hildreth's work are fidelity and candor of spirit, and perspicuity and terseness of style. — Southern Literary Gazette. It is a plain, dignified, impartial, and fearless exhibition of facts. — Genesee Evangelist. The author's grouping of men and events is skillful, and renders his rapid nar- rative pleasant reading. — N. Y. Evening Post. These handsome volumes should be on the table of every American who de- sires the most thorough and clear report of our nation's history yet published. — Rochester Democrat. The history is a reliable, and, in all respects, an admirable one.— Ontario Re- pository. The author makes every thing plain and clear which he touches. — Southern Christian Advocate. A history of the United States that could be regarded by all men as a standard of authority, as well as a model of impartial labor. — Worcester Palladium. A work which should be in every American's hands. — Springfield Republican. His style is clear and forcible, and his work is very valuable on account of the political information it contains. — Savannah Republican. HILDRETH'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Written with candor, brevity, fidelity to facts, and simplicity of style and man- ner, and forms a welcome addition to tlie library of the nation. — Prot. Churchman Mr. Hildreth is a bold and copious writer. His work is valuable for the im- mense amount of material it embodies.— JJe Bow's Review of the Southern and Western States. We may safely commend Mr. Hildreth' s work as written in an excellent 6tyle and containing a vast amount of valuable information Albany Argus. ' His style is vigorously simple. It has the virtue of perspicuity Zioris Herald. We value it on account of its impartiality. We have found nothing to indi- cate the least desire on the part of the author to exalt or debase any man or any party. His very patriotism, though high-principled and sincere, is sober and discriminate, and appears to be held in strong check by the controlling recollec- tion that he is writing for posterity, and that if the facts which he publishes will not honor his country and his countrymen, fulsome adulation will not add to their glory. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. We are confident that when the merits of this history come to be known and appreciated, it will be extensively regarded as decidedly superior to any thing that before existed on American history, and as a valuable contribution to American authorship. These stately volumes will be an ornament to any libra- ry, and no intelligent American can afford to be without the work. We have nobly patronized the great English history of the age, let us not fail to appre- ciate and patronize an American history so respectable and valuable as this cer- tainly is. — Biblical Repository {Bibliotheca Sacra). This work professes only to deal in facts; it is a book of records; it puts to- gether clearly, consecutively, and, we believe, with strict impartiality, the events of American history. The work indicates patient, honest, and careful research, systematic arrangement, and lucid exposition. — Home Journal. To exhibit the progress of the country from infancy to maturity; to show the actual state of the people, the real character of their laws and institutions, and the true designs of their leading men, at different periods, and to relate a sound, unvarnished tale of our early history, has been his design ; and we are free to acknowledge that it has been executed with marked ability and triumph- ant success. Every lover of impartial history will accord to Mr. Hildreth his due meed of praise for the able and honest manner in which he has given the true history of the United States. — Pennsylvanian. This work is full of detail, bears marks of care and research, and is written under the guidance of clear sight and good judgment rather than of theory, philosophical or historical, or of prejudice of any sort whatever. We trust that it will be widely read.— N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. We pronounce it unsurpassed as a full, clear, and truthful history of our country so far. We rejoice that a work so important to our nation has been so ably performed. — Literary American. Interesting, valuable, and very attractive. It is written in a style eminently clear and attractive, and presents the remarkable history which it records in a form of great simplicity and with graphic force. There is in it no attempt to Ealliate what is wrong, or to conceal what is true. It is a life-like and reliable istory of the most remarkable series of events in the annals of the world.— A'. Y. Journal of Commerce. It is a valuable acquisition to American literature.— Baltimore American. The history of our country with a scrupulous regard to truth.— Buffalo Courier. We believe this to be a truthful, judicious, and valuable history, worthy of general acceptation. — Philadelphia North American. The first complete history of our country. — Chronotype. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. *»* Habpeb & Brothkbs will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), ou receipt of the Money. Works by Thomas Carlyle. History of Friedrich the Second, called Frederic the Great. 4 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $1 25 each. Vols. I. and II., with Portraits and Maps, just ready. The French Revolution. A History. Newly Eevised by the Author, with Index, &c. 2 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $2 00 ; Half Calf, $3 70. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. Including the Supplement to the First Edition. With Elucidations and Connecting Narrative. 2 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $2 00; Half Calf, $3 70. Past and Present. Chartism and Sartor Eesartus. A New Edition. Complete in 1 vol. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00 ; Half Calf, $1 85. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York Harper & Brothers will send either of the above Works by Mail, postage paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of the Money. KIRWAN'S WORKS, PUBLISHED BY Harper 8c Brothers, FRANKLIN SQUARE, N. Y. Romanism at Home. Letters to the Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief-Justice of the United States. By Kirwan. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents. Men and Things as I saw them in Europe. By Kirwan. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents. Parish and other Pencilings. By Kirwan. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents. Letters to Bishop Hughes. By Kirwan. New and Eevised Edition. 12mo. Harper's Series of School and Family Readers. Consisting- of a Primer and Seven Readers. By Marcius Willson, Author of "A Popular Series of School Histories." THE PRIMER (Introductory). Price 15 cents. Beginning with the Alphabet, is divided into Four Parts, and extends to words of four letters. Part I., the Alphabet, is illustrated much more beautifully than any other Primer, both by letters, and cuts explanatory of the words in the Alphabetical arrangement. Part II. contains 18 Reading Lessons of words of two letters, ar- ranged in simple sentences. No unmeaning syllables are given. Part III. has 26 Lessons, of words of not more than three letters. Part 1 V. has 21 Lessons, of words of not more than four letters. Separate " Pronouncing Lessons" are given, containing the words used in the Reading Lessons. To guard against the formation of a monotonous habit, and as a guide to the proper modulations of the voice, the conversational style is adopted to a considerable extent, and marks are given to denote the rising and falling inflections. The object of this is to require children to read questions and their answers in the same manner as they speak them, and thus to lay the foun- dations of good reading at the very beginning. The Primer contains more than a hundred beautiful Illustrations. WILLSON'S FIRST READER. Price 20 cents. Beginning with easy words of four letters in Part I. , extends to easy words of six letters in Parts IV. and V., and a few easy words of two and three syllables. In this work also the conversational style is frequently introduced, as it is that which is capable of giving the greatest variety to the Heading Lessons, and one that easily familiarizes the pupil with the inflections, and shows their necessity. It is scarcely possible that the pupil who follows the simple and easy system herd marked out, can afterward fall into a drawling and monotonous habit of reading. The Illustrations are numerous and superior. "WILLSON'S SECOND READER. Price 30 cents. Is divided into Seven Parts, each preceded by one or more Elocutionary Rules, desiqwd for the use of the teacher only, and to enforce upon him the importance of requiring the pupils to read as directed by the inflections given. The marks denoting the inflections are not so numerous as to assume an unnecessary im- portance, nor are they used except where it would be a manifest error to disre- gard them. The elocutionary aim of these readers is to teach children to read correctly, not by ruU, but by Habit, and to this end the constant practice of reading correctly is insisted upon, as being far more efficacious than Rules to cor- rect bad habits already formed. Superior illustrative engravings are made the subjects of a large number of the Reading Lessons : — the persons represented, their actions, supposed sayings, &c, are made available to give animation and variety to the reading, and to impart instruction ; and the principle is kept in view that in childhood it is through the medium of the perceptive faculties that the attention is the most readily awak- ened, and memory and judgment the most successfully cultivated. Part VII., which is principally designed to illustrate the principle here referred to, contains a Lesson on Colors, which is illustrated by a beautiful colored plate, in which twenty different colors are accurately designated. HARPERS SERIES OF SCHOOL AND FAMILY READERS. WILLSON'S THIRD READER. Price 50 cents. Contains, first, a brief synopsis of the " Elements of Elocution," in which the 44 Rules" already given in the Second Reader are repeated, with some additions and further explanations, and more numerous examples. Then follows Tart I., entitled " Stories from the Bible," in which some of the most interesting inci- dents in Sacred History are narrated in simple language, with various illustra- tive poetical selections, to give variety to the reading. The pictorial illustrations to this Part are unsurpassed in any work. Part II., entitled " Moral Lessons," is designed to inculcate moral truths, and is made up mostly of selected articles. Part III., entering upon the more prominent and characteristic features of the Series, takes up the first great division of Zoology or Animal Life, and is con- fined to the subject of the Mammalia, mostly Quadrupeds. Although Quadru- peds are here arranged in their scientific divisions, and treated upon a scientific basis, yet the whole is made as interesting as a romance. Species and individu- als are described rather than genera; incidents illustrative of the habits and characteristics of animals are numerous ; poetical and prose selections give vari- ety to the Lessons ; and the illustrations are unsurpassed in any work on Natural History. A new and important feature is introduced — that of grouping the Ani- mals of a Class in one engraving, with their comparative sizes, and a scale of measurement. Part IV. is made up of Miscellaneous Articles. "WILLSON'S FOURTH READER. Price 66 cents. Contains, first, the " Elements of Elocution," the same as the Third Reader, as frequent reference is made to the Rules thi - oughout the work. Part I. treats of " Human Physiology and Health" in a series of interesting Reading Lessons, original and selected, which exclude scientific technicalities. Explanatory Notes, with accompanying illustrative cuts, convey much additional useful information that could not well be introduced into the Reading Lessons. Part II. resumes the subject of Zoology in the division which treats of Ornithology or Birds. A delightful field is here opened, and nothing can be more interesting than the manner in which the subject is treated. The leading species of the several Classes or Orders into which Birds are divided, are grouped in cuts which shew their relative sizes ; and many of the most beautiful poetic gems in our language accompany and illustrate the descriptive portions, and the incidents narrated. Part III. takes up the First Division of Vegetable Physiology or Potany, and gives to the subject an interest and variety that can not be appreciated from any description that can be given. Part IV. is made up of Miscellaneous Selections. Part V. takes up the First Division of Natural Philosophy, in which we look in upon the school at " Glenwild," and listen to the instructions given to a " Vol- unteer Philosophy Class," and the conversations which are held there. In all the Readers after the Second the more difficult words in each Lesson have small figures, as references, attached to them, and are defined, as referred to, at the close of the Lesson. The remaining numbers of the Series, which will embrace, in the form of prac- tical, varied, and interesting Reading Lessons, the several departments of Nat- ural History— Zoology, Physiology, Physical Geography, Chemistry, Geology, Astronomy, &c, &c— and also, in the Seventh Reader, such subjects as Rhet- oric, Criticism, Taste, Oratory, Sculpture and Painting, Music, &c— all popu- larized to the capacities of the various grades of pupils for whom they are de- signed — will be completed at an early day. (Rjp The three leading points of merit claimed for these Readers are: 1st, They will prove exceedingly interesting to all. 2d, Being adapted to form habits of correct reading at the very beginning of the pupil's course, they will secure the highest degree of practical Instruction in the Art of Reading. 3d, They will impart a great amount of Usrftxl Information, which, in no other way, can be brought before the great mass of the children in our schools. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. |£$P HARrER & Brothers will send either of the above Works by Mail, post- age paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of the Money. Incomparably the best Work on the Subject. DEAPER'S PHYSIOLOGY. HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, STATICAL AND DY- NAMICAL ; or, The Conditions and Course of the Life of Man : being the Text of the Lectures delivered in the Medical Department of the University. By John W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. Illustrated by nearly 300 fine Wood-cuts from Photographs. 8vo, 650 pages, Sheep, $4 25. The favorable reception which has been given to this book by the Public and the Medical Profession, both in America and Eurdpe, proves how completely it has accomplished its object of bringing the science on which it treats to the comprehension of the general read- er, without any sacrifice of its high scientific position. As a repre- sentation of the present state of Physiology, embodying all the re- cent foreign discoveries in a form not otherwise accessible to the student, it has, in less than a year, been adopted as a text-book in a majority of American Colleges. Great, however, as its success in that respect has been, the favor extended to it by the reading and educated classes generally is still more striking. They have appreciated the manner in which it brings knowledge on a subject of the highest importance to the well-being of society to the easy comprehension of persons not fa- miliar with medical matters. They have found it to be a book not alone adapted to the University or College, but suited to the in- struction of every head of a family. The numerous Photographic engravings it contains tend greatly to a clear illustration of the va- rious topics it discusses, enabling those who have only the opportu- nity of casual study to follow the Author in his descriptions without any difficulty. Of all the sciences, none comes more closely home to us than Physiology. It explains to us how " fearfully and wonderfully we are made," teaches us how the various parts of our system act in a state of health, and enables us to understand the causes of our ail- ments and diseases. There is no class of society, and, indeed, no individual, who may not profitably become acquainted with it. It is therefore to the general reader, as well as to the profession, that this book is offered. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. Hasfzk & Beotheeb will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of $4 25. COMPLETION OP GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. A HISTORY OF GREECE, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE CLOSE OF THE GENERA- TION CONTEMPORARY WITH ALEXANDER THE GREAT. BY GEORGE GROTE, ESQ. Vol. XII. contains Portrait, Maps, and Index. Complete in 12 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $9 00 ; Sheep, $12 00 ; Half Calf, $15 00. It is not often that a work of such magnitude is undertaken ; more seldom still is such a work so perseveringly carried on, and so soon and yet so worthily ac- complished. Mr. Grote has illustrated and invested with an entirely new signifi- cance a portion of the past history of humanity, which he, perhaps, thinks the most splendid that has been, and which all allow to have been very splendid. He has made great Greeks live again before us, and has enabled us to realize Greek modes of think- ing. He has added a great historical work to the language, taking its place with other great histories, and yet not like any of them in the special combination of merits which it exhibits : scholarship and learning such as we have been ac- customed to demand only in Germans ; an art of grouping and narration diflerent from" that of Hume, different from that of Gibbon, and yet producing the effect of sustained charm and pleasure ; a peculiarly keen interest in events of the political order, and a wide knowledge of the business of politics ; and, finally, harmonizing all, a spirit of sober philosophical generalization always tending to view facts collectively in their speculative bearing as well as to record them individually. It is at once an ample and detailed narrative of the history of Greece, and a lucid philosophy of Grecian history. — London Athenaeum, March 8, 1856. Mr. Grote will be emphatically the historian of the people of Greece.— Dublin University Magazine. The acute intelligence, the discipline, faculty of intellect, and the excellent eru- dition every one would look for from Mr. Grote ; but they will here also find the element which harmonizes these, and without which, on such a theme, an orderly and solid work could not have been written. — Examiner. A work second to that of Gibbon alone in English historical literature. Mr. Grote gives the philosophy as well as the facts ot history, and it would be difficult to find an author combining in the same degree the accurate learning of the schol- ar with the experience of a practical statesman. The completion of this great work may well be hailed with some degree of national pride and satisfaction. — Literary Gazette, March 8, 1856. The better acquainted any one is with Grecian history, and with the manner in which that history has heretofore been written, the higher will be his estimation of this work. Mr. Grote's familiarity both with the great highways and the ob- scurest by-paths of Grecian literature and antiquity has seldom been equaled, and not often approached, in unlearned England ; while those Germans who have ri- valed it have seldom possessed the quality which eminently characterizes Mr. Grote, of keeping historical imagination severely under the restraints of evidence. The great charm of Mr. Grote's history has been throughout the cordial admira' tion he feels for the people whose acts and fortunes he has to relate. * * We bid Mr. Grote farewell ; heartily congratulating him on the conclusion of a work which is a monument of English learning, of English clear-sightedness, and of English love of freedom and the characters it produces. — Spectator. Endeavor to become acquainted with Mr. Grote, who is engaged on a Greek History. I expect a great deal from this production.— Niebuhb, the Historian, to Professor Lieber. The author has now incontcstably won for himself the title, not merely of a historian, but of the historian of Greece. — Quarterly Review. Mr. Grote is, beyond all question, the historian of Greece, unrivaled, so far as we know, in the erudition and genius with which he has revived the picture of a distant past, and brought home every part and feature of its history to our intel- lects and our hearts. — London Times. For becoming dignity of style, unforced adaptation of results to principles, care- ful verification of theory by fact, and impregnation of fact by theory— for extensive and well-weighed learning, employed with intelligence and taste, we have seen no historical work of modern times which we would place above Mr. Grote's histo- ry. — Morning Chronicle. HARPER &. BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE, N. Y. * # * Harpeb & Bbothebs will send either of the following "Works by Mail, postage paid (for any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on re- ceipt of One Dollar. LIDDELL AND SMITH'S SCHOOL HISTORIES OF GREECE AND ROME. DR. SMITH'S HISTORY OF GREECE. A School History of Greece, from the Earliest Times to the Ro- man Conquest, with Supplementary Chapters on the History of Literature and Art. By Wm. Smith, LL.D., Classical Ex- aminer in the University of London, and Editor of the "Class- ical Dictionaries." Revised, with an Appendix, by George W. Greene, A.M. Illustrated by 100 Engravings on Wood. (Uniform with "Liddell's Rome" and "The Student's Gib- bon.") New Edition. 679 pages, Large 12mo, Muslin, $1 00. We have much satisfaction in hearing testimony to the excellence of the plan on which Dr. Wm. Smith has proceeded, and the careful, scholar-like manner in which he has carried it out. The great distinctive feature, however, is the chapters on Literature and Art. This gives it a decided advantage over all pre- vious works of the kind. — Athenaeum. DEAN LIDDELL'S HISTORY OF ROME. A School History of Rome, from the Earliest Times to the Estab- lishment of the Empire, with Chapters on the History of Liter- ature and Art. By Henry G. Liddell, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Illustrated by numerous Wood-cuts. (Uni- form with "The Student's Gibbon" and "Smith's History of Greece.") 778 pages, Large 12mo, Muslin, $1 00. This excellent History of Rome, from the pen of one of the most celebrated scholars of the day, will supersede every other work on the subject The volume conforms with the "History of Greece," by Dr. Wm. Smith, in typography, literary method, and illustration. — John BulL DR. SMITH'S STUDENT'S GIBBON. The History of the Decline and Eall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon. Abridged. Incorporating the Researches of Recent Commentators. By William Smith, LL.D., Editor of the " Classical Dictionary" and " A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities." Illustrated by 100 Engravings on Wood. (Uniform with " Liddell's Rome.") 705 pages, Large 12mo, Muslin, $1 00. Dr. Wm. Smith has drawn up an admirable abridgment of Gibbon's Roman Empire, using, as far as possible, the language of the original, and adopting the Elan of omitting or treating briefly circumstances of inferior importance, so that be grand events which have influenced the history of the world may be nar- rated at length.— Cambridge Chronicle. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. THE LAND AND THE BOOK; OE, BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN FROM THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, THE SCENES AND SCENERY OF THE HOLY LAND. By W. M. THOMSON, D.D., Twenty-five Years a Missionary of the A.B.C.F.M. in Syria and Palestine. With two elaborate Maps of Palestine, an accurate Plan of Jeru- salem, and several hundred Engravings representing the Scenery, Topography, and Productions of the Holy Land, and the Cos- tumes, Manners, and Habits of the People. Two elegant Large 12mo Volumes, Muslin, $3 50 ; Half Calf, $5 20. The Land of the Bible is part of the Divine Revelation. It bears testimony essential to faith, and gives lessons invaluable in exposi- tion. Both have been written all over the fair face of Palestine, and deeply graven there by the finger of God in characters of living light. To collect this testimony and popularize these lessons for the biblical student of every age and class is the prominent design of this work. For twenty-Jive years the Author has been permitted to read the Book by the light which the Land sheds upon it ; and he now hands over this friendly torch to those who have not been thus favored. In this attempt the pencil has been employed to aid the pen. A large number of pictorial illustrations are introduced, many of them original, and all giving a genuine and true represen- tation of things in the actual Holy Land of the present day. They are not fancy sketches of imaginary scenes thrown in to embellish the page, but pictures of living manners, studies of sacred topogra- phy, or exponents of interesting biblical allusions, which will add greatly to the value of the work. Published ly HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New Yorh Harper & Brothers will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the Money. By William C. Prime. Boat Life in Egypt & Nubia. Boat Life in Egypt and Nubia. By William C. Prime, Au- thor of "The Old House by the River," "Later Years," &c. Illustrations. i2mo, Muslin, $i 25. Tent Life in the Holy Land. By William C. Prime, Author of " The Old House by the River," " Later Years," &c. Illustrations. 1 2mo, Mus- lin, $1 25. The Old House by the River. By William C. 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The histories of Rome and Greece are written from an American point of view. Capital little volumes. Though written in a simple and artless style to cap- tivate juvenile students of history, they are not devoid of a philosophical spirit to prompt reflection. — Christian Register. For writings intended for juvenile readers Mr. Bonner's style is a models sweet, flowing, animated, with a liberal use of colloquial expressions. — X. Y. Tribune. Good books for the school and family library.— N. Y. Observer. History presented in such a shape as to possess all the charms of a romance.—. New Orleans Crescent. Bonner's Child's History of Rome is the best in the market for young readers. — Church Journal. A remarkably successful effort at adapting a historical narrative to the tastes of youthful readers. — Presbyterian. Mr. Bonner writes with freedom and force, avoiding verbosity and pedantry, and a child of five or a man of seventy can alike understand his meaning. — X. Y. Daily Times. Written with simplicity, and in a manner to engage the attention of youthful readers.— N. Y. Evening Post. We welcome these volumes with most sincere pleasure. They have a perma- nent value, and are fitting companions for that beautiful Child's History of En- gland, by Dickens. — St. Louis Republican. The press can not teem with too many just such books.— Savannah Georgian. Mr. Bonner excels as a historian for the young. His simple, vigorous style, absence of profound reflections, and power of condensing, by grasping the prom- inent points and leaving out minor incidents, admirably fit him for a task lik« the present.— Boston Journal. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, New York. BY CATHAKINE E. BEECHER. Domestic Economy. A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the use of Young Ladies at Home and at School. Eevised Edition, with numerous Ad- ditions and illustrative Engravings. 12mo, Muslin, 75 cents. Domestic Receipt-Book. 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TRANSLATED BY JOHN BONNER, ESQ. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00. A calm, philosophical inquiry into the causes of the French Revolution, and the working of the Old Regime. In this work, M. de Tocqueville has daguerreo- typed French political society under the old monarchy ; shown us where the real power lay, and how it affected individual Frenchmen in the daily avocations of life ; what was the real condition of the nobility, of the clergy, of the middle classes, of the "people," of the peasantry ; wherein France differed from all other countries in Europe ; why a Revolution was inevitable. The information de- rived under these various heads, it may safely be said, is now first printed. It has been obtained, as M. de Tocqueville informs us, mainly from the manuscript records of the old intendants' offices and the Council of State. Of the labor de- voted to the task, an idea may be formed from the author's statement, that more than one of the thirty odd chapters contained in the volume, alone cost him a year's researches. " I trust," says M. de Tocqueville in hia Preface, " that I have written this work without prejudice ; but I can not say I have written without feeling. It would be scarcely proper for a Frenchman to be calm when he speaks of his country, and thinks of the times in which we live. I acknowledge, therefore, that in studying the society of the Old Regime in all its details, I have never lost sight of the society of our own day." The work abounds with allusions to the Empire and the Emperor. It need hardly be added, that these allusions are not eulogistic of the powers that bo. Napoleon has seldom been assailed with more pungent satire or more cogent logic. HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE, N. Y. WOMAN S RECORD ; Or, Sketches of all Distinguished "Women from the Creation to the Present Time. Arranged in Four Eras. With Selections from Female Writers of each Era. By Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale. Illustrated with 230 engraved Portraits. Second Edition, re- vised and enlarged. Koyal 8vo, Muslin, $3 50 ; Sheep, $-4 00; Half Calf, $4 25. " Many years have been devoted to the preparation of this comprehensive work, which contains complete and accurate sketches of the most distinguished wome~ in all ages, and, in extent and thoroughness, far surpasses every previous bio. graphical collection with a similar aim. Mrs. Hale has ransacked the treasures of history for information in regard to the eminent women whom it commemor- ates ; few, if any, important names are omitted in her volumes, while the living celebrities of the day are portrayed with justness and delicacy. The picture of woman's life, as it has been developed from the times of the earliest traditions to the present date, is here displayed in vivid and impressive colors, and with a living sympathy which could only flow from a feminine pen. A judicious selec- tion from the writings of women who have obtained distinction in the walks of literature is presented, affording an opportunity for comparing the noblest produc- tions of the female mind, and embracing many exquisite gems of fancy and feel- ing. The biographies are illustrated by a series of highly-finished engravings, which form a gallery of portraits of curious interest to the amateur, as well as of great historical value. This massive volume furnishes an historical portrait gallery, in which each age of this world had its appropriate representatives. Mrs. Hale has succeeded ad- mirably in her biographical sketches. — Philadelphia Presbyterian. " Woman's Record" is, indeed, a noble study and noble history. The sketches are all carefully and even elegantly written. — Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. What lady, who takes a pride in her sex, would not desire to have this volume on her centre-table 1 and what husband, lover, or brother would leave such a wish ungratified. — Washington Republic. This superb monument of Mrs. Hale's indefatigable devotion to her sex is illus- trated by 230 portraits, engraved in that style of excellence that has deservedly placed Lossing at the head of his profession. — Philadelphia Saturday Courier. We are pleased with the plan of the " Record," and with the manner in which that plan is carried into execution. The book is a valuable and permanent con- tribution to literature. — Xcw Orleans Baptist Chronicle. This work merits the warmest commendation. — Sun. This is a large and beautiful book, and covers the ground marked out by the title more fully and satisfactorily than any other work extant. It is a most valuable work. — Southern Ladies' Companion. Here we have placed before us a book that would do credit to any author or compiler that ever lived, and, to the astonishment of some, produced by the head, heart, and hand of a woman. — N. Y. Daily Times. This is a very curious and very interesting work— a Biographical Dictionary of all Distinguished Females— a work, we believe, quite unique in the history of literature. We have only to say that the work will be found both instructive, amusing, and generally impartial.— London Ladies' 1 Messenger. The comprehensiveness of the work renders it a valuable addition to the library. — London Ladies' 1 Companion. A Female Biographical Dictionary, which this volume really is, will often be consulted as an authority ; and the great extent of Mrs. Hale's information as to the distinguished women of modern times, supplies us with a number of facts which we knew not where to procure elsewhere. It is clearly and simply written. ^-London Gardian. harper's Catalogue. A New Descriptive Catalogue op Harper & Brothers' Publications is now ready for distribution, and may be obtained gratuitously on application to the Publishers personally, or by let- ter inclosing Six Cents in postage stamps. The attention of gen- tlemen, in town or country, designing to form Libraries or enrich their literary collections, is respectfully invited to this Catalogue, which will be found to comprise a large proportion of the standard and most esteemed works in English Literature — comprehending more than two thousand volumes — which are offered, in most instances, at less than one half the cost of similar productions in England. To Librarians and others connected with Colleges, Schools, &c, who may not have access to a reliable guide in form- ing the true estimate of literary productions, it is believed this Cat- alogue will prove especially valuable as a manual of reference. 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