hen if all the good and
thoughtful men run away from us to some new country, what are we to do with
our poor dear Old England?"

"Oh, you must run away with the good, thoughtful men--(I mean to consider
that as a compliment to myself, Maggie!) Will you let me wish I had been
born poor, if I am to stay in England? I should not then be liable to this
fault into which I see the rich men fall, of forgetting the trials of the
poor."

"I am not sure whether, if you had been poor, you might not have fallen
into an exactly parallel fault, and forgotten the trials of the rich. It is
so difficult to understand the errors into which their position makes all
men liable to fall. Do you remember a story in 'Evenings at Home,' called
the Transmigrations of Indra? Well! when I was a child, I used to wish I
might be transmigrated (is that the right word?) into an American
slave-owner for a little while, just that I might understand how he must
suffer, and be sorely puzzled, and pray and long to be freed from his
odious wealth, till at last he grew hardened to its nature;--and since
then, I have wished to be the Emperor of Russia, for the same reason. Ah!
you may laugh; but that is only because I have not explained myself
properly."

"I was only smiling to think how ambitious any one might suppose you were
who did not know you."

"I don't see any ambition in it--I don't think of the station--I only want
sorely to see the 'What's resisted' of Burns, in order that I may have more
charity for those who seem to me to have been the cause of such infinite
woe and misery."

"'What's done we partly may compute;
But know not what's resisted,'"

repeated Frank musingly. After some time he began again:

"But, Maggie, I don't give up this wish of mine to go to Australia--Canada,
if you like it better--anywhere where there is a newer and purer state of
society."

"The great objection seems to be your duty, as an only child, to your
father. It is different to the case of one out of a large family."

"I wish I were one in twenty, then I might marry where I liked to-morrow."

"It would take two people's consent to such a rapid measure," said Maggie,
laughing. "But now I am going to wish a wish, which it won't require a
fairy godmother to gratify. Look, Frank, do you see in the middle of that
dark brown purple streak of moor a yellow gleam of light? It is a pond, I
think, that at this time of the year catches a slanting beam of the sun. I