nification of some one emotion. What can be more full of sweetness
and humble adoration than the Annunciation! what more awe-inspiring,
more faithful in its horror, than the miracle of Lazarus, where the
corpse, swathed in its bandages, stands upright among the multitude with
its hollow eyes gazing in mingled gratitude and terror at the Saviour!
what more full of grotesque sternness than the Last Judgment! what more
nobly imagined, more faithfully executed, than the Last Supper! The
simplicity and sublimity of revelation shine down from them, and make
the beholder speechless with the thought of divine love.

Let us go no farther. Let us end our holiday here. Under the altar
sleeps the old knight who built the chapel, and outside the door the
peasants sit upon the threshold of his palace. The butterflies saunter
in on the sun-filled breeze and flutter about the lilies on the table
and the painted lilies on the wall. The dark sweet faces shine down from
the frescoes, as they have shone down upon the worshippers through the
ages, with a blessing on their holy, sentient mouths. A deep reverent
hush is in the air--a nameless expectancy fills our hearts. We stand on
the threshold of all that is best and worthiest in the human life of
centuries, with the shades of the great and noble pressing about us. The
announcing angel has brought unto us the lilies of revelation, and we
feel with glad humility that we are for ever one with all the high souls
that have joined earth with heaven.

CHARLOTTE ADAMS.

A LAW UNTO HERSELF.

CHAPTER VI.

A year after Laidley's death, Judge Rhodes, being in New York,
breakfasted with Mr. Neckart. He noticed that the editor had grown lean
and sallow. "And God knows he had no good looks to spare," smoothing
down his own white beard over his comfortable paunch. Something, too, of
that easy frankness which had made Neckart so popular was gone; no topic
interested him; his eye was secretive and irritable; he spoke and moved
under the constant pressure of self-control. The judge, as he watered
his claret, eyed the dark face opposite to him critically. "Now, I
never," he thought, "saw a sign of ill-temper or cruelty in that man.
Yet I have a queer fancy that if the reins were once taken off he could
not master himself again. It must be devilishly uncomfortable, holding
one's self in in that way," the last morsel of quail sliding down his
throat