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"I have always said," remarked Sir Charles when he heard of it, "that Monsieur Philipon was a harmless, good enough sort of person. For nothing, did you say, Massey? Dear me! In the City, now, we know better."

"We do, indeed, Sir Charles," said Mr. Skantlebury. It is difficult to see what services a man can render his brother man for nothing in the City, unless he gives him cargoes for nothing.

"The man is a foreigner," said Mr. Colliber. "I've always thought that another name for Tom Fool."

"But if he teaches the boy French"-observed Mr. Massey, with a little doubt. "Take his offer, Massey," said Mr. Colliber. "Take all you can get for nothing." Hector also made the same offer to Mrs. Gallaway, but it was declined because the ruler of the house said that his uncle, who had the great house at Brixton, and was in a Large Way in Oil, had got on without French, and so could he.

The lessons were not at all what the boys expected. They looked forward with little eagerness to learning grammar and writing exercises. They found no grammar at all, and no exercises. On the contrary, the lamp was lit in the sitting-room; there were two or three books on the table. Their teacher welcomed them in French, and then informed them in English that for the future no word of their own language was to be spoken in his presence. The boys looked at each other in dismay. Why, he was always with them. Not a word of English? Were, then, their very sports in the forest to be conducted, so to speak, in French? Then M. Philipon rolled a cigarette, lit it, and began to talk to Claire. Then Claire began to talk to the boys, but they understood not one word. Then she read to her father, and presently handed them the book, but they could not read a word.

When they went home they felt inclined to cry, and wondered whether it was possible for two boys to look more profoundly foolish. The next evening Claire met them at the garden gate and told them a few French phrases, and the names of things about them, and what she was going to talk about with her father. Accordingly, when the lesson began, they knew what was meant, and she went round the room giving names to the things. Then they began to find French names for everything; as they played in the forest; as they walked to school and back; whenever they were with Claire. Remark, that the first thing you want in a language is the

vocabulary; men who learn many languages begin after the manner of Adam, with the names, not after the manner of the schoolmaster, with the syntax. Those who do not want to learn a language begin with grammar and exercises; this is the way of our schools, and it is the cause of our brilliant success in modern languages. Next, they learned, chiefly by Claire's help, how to connect the names with verbs and adjectives and things of that sort; and they perceived that a certain amount of grammar was necessary, which M. Philipon was so good as to put into their heads; but there was no regular teaching; he sat and listened while they talked and read. One may remark that if he had adopted the method at his school, the girls would have really learned French; but he was expected to follow the lines to which his employer was accustomed. That is to say, he read Racine with the girls and made them write exercises on the experiences of the watchmaker's aunt and the gardener's grandfather. Therefore, the girls did not learn French at all and the boys did, though they wrote no exercises at all and knew nothing about the gardener's grandfather. The difference was that Miss Billingsworth bought a machine warranted to grind in one way only, and that the boys got a man's brains given to their service and always thinking what would be best for them.

When their ears had caught the sound of the French language, when they had learned a copious vocabulary and could read with pleasure and talk freely, though still with plenty of mistakes, their teacher set them to write; they read a story one evening and wrote it down the next; then they compared what they had written with what they had read and were put to shame. It was necessary to find out many more things in the grammar; they found these out.

Hector Philipon, in fact, was a man of ideas and of clear mind. He wanted the boys to learn, not to pretend. He therefore made them teach themselves by an intelligent process, while he taught his girls by the conventional process. In two years they really knew French. Hector, by this most precious gift, lifted them by one step out of the lower levels of clerkery; their commercial value. was doubled.

One does not talk every evening with a man who has read, and can think, and has acted among his fellow-men, without results. First of all, the boys read quantities of books, lively travels, in which the writers, being Frenchmen, looked out perpetually for

dramatic situations; biographies, also written by Frenchmen, and therefore compiled with a view to tableaux; history, which is full of splendid scenes; and tales, especially the tales of Erckmann-Chatrian. Next, they learned that there are other forms of life besides business life in the City; this was an immense stride in knowledge; and other occupations besides making money by buying cheap and selling dear, and other men and women besides the people of the City. They got all kinds of ideas, with vague ambitions; they forgot their poverty and the very small and humble début into life which was before them; their hearts glowed in thinking of the great deeds of the men who had gone before them, and the splendid things which they, too, would achieve. In the course of time there grew up in both the boys a dim and shadowy vision of a great and wonderful future opening out for all the world; what it was they did not know, nor did they inquire; nor did

they realise that the thing had been suggested by their instructor. All that they understood as yet was, that some time or other the wars and battles would come to an end because there would be nothing left to fight for; that the history of the world is a history of people fighting for justice; that they would at last, somehow, arrive at justice; and that this would so far extend the general stock of happiness that there would be enough to go round and to spare. Was not this a great and suggestive lesson for the boys to learn?

Oh! harmless M. Philipon! Oh! unsuspecting village! Oh! condescension and patronage! For here were two boys, with strong brains and stout arms, already full of ideas and athirst for knowledge, and here was a crafty teacher of girls-nothing more than that-leading them on, step by step, into ways of thought, which gentlemen who had failed for an aggregate of a million and a quarter could not contemplate without horror.

ALPINE RESTING PLACES.
A Story above the Clouds.

BY "SHIRLEY."

MAY MAXWELL TO ISABEL LEE.

but he is constancy itself to Monte Rosa and the Jungfrau. I all came about through papa. He had been terribly worried with his Commentary on the Minor Prophets; the Spectator didn't half like its "ethical departure;" the Saturday Review said that even Charles Kingsley or Froude couldn't have made a greater mess of it; and the penny-aliners-but I needn't bother you, dear, with the outs and ins, only papa was abused right and left as a perfect pickpocket-poor dear papa, who wouldn't hurt a fly. So he was out of sorts, and La Beata insisted that he should see Dr. Bolus and be patched up there and then. Tom brought Dr. Bolus down next day in the boat, and it was all arranged after

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HERE never was such luck, my dearest Bell. You know how much I wanted to see the Alps that Tom raves about. Tom is a terrible flirt with you girls, my dear,

A tight and tidy little lass never looks better than when she is scrambling over the glacier with all her 'things' in a knapsack. Why, there was a charming girl at the Bel Alp last summer who lived for a month on a clean collar, and a 'change' of dry stockings. The father was an English earl, and the daughter was as thoroughbred as a Derby winner. The famous Boston beauty, Lily Vanderloo, who had two mules to carry her trunks, looked dowdy beside her. They are hot-house plants, to be sure, these Yankee dolls, and can't stand the cold water and the keen air which make you English girls, May, so nice and bracing." Tom is simply aggravating at times. He knows I hate his patronising airs, but that of course only makes him worse. To hear him talk, you would fancy that he was the Sultan of Turkey or the Khan of Tartary, and that we were all ready to go down on our knees to the men-detestable creatures! What a pity it is, Bell, that there are no Amazons now; it would have been so jolly to get away quite by ourselves, like Mr. Tennyson's princess. But after all, to be sure, she wasn't good for much.

dinner when we were sitting out on the shore looking at Goatfell through the twilight. Well, Tom may say what he likes about the Swiss mountains, but there never was such a purple as we had that evening, except perhaps in one of Mr. Waller Paton's pictures. I rather suspect that Tom was at the bottom of the prescription-only to be sure it's quite the fashion now with the faculty; and I do think it's a vast improvement on the horrid pills and powders they used to give us in the nursery-I don't expect I shall get the taste of the currant jelly out of my mouth as long as I live. It was just this:-papa was to give up his books and his boating and go and live for six months seven thousand feet above the sea. But he couldn't afford to keep a balloon, papa said, rather grimly at first. The doctor and Tom, however, were resolved that he should go. There were no end of famous hotels in Switzerland and the Tyrol, where you could live for months above the clouds, and feel exactly like a lark when it is up in the sky. But for the removal of pressure from the lungs, Tom remarked with perfect gravity, the lark could never manage to sing as he does; and Dr. Bolus added that it had the same effect on the liver. "And the heart, too, I hope ?" papa asked rather drearily, indicating that it was there or thereabouts that the pressure in his case was sorest. "Certainly," said Dr. Bolus ; "only in the pharma-mere matter of form, for he carries all before copoeia we call it the stomach"-O Bell, Bell, I do hate these men of science who can play with our tenderest feelings in this cruel way. Tom did not seem to see it, and only pressed his hand over his waistcoat with an air of quizzical adoration as he looked at me. And this from Tom, who I had thought,-but men are monsters, my dear, and only nice, really nice, in a novel.

Then the question of how and where we were to go was hotly debated. Tom had it all cut and dry, and he had his way of course. Tom is like a benevolent hurricane, and though I make a show of opposition, it is a

him. It was no good going to the Pyrenees ; the mountains there were all carefully labelled and packed away out of sight; our rough tweeds and serges would be utterly ludicrous at Eaux Chaudes or Eaux Bonnes; a Frenchman drinking the waters was little better than an over-dressed monkey, being in fact the missing link for which Mr. Darwin had been seeking so long. Then the Bernese OberTom was appointed Commander-in-Chief. land was eaten up by countless herds of Cock"Don't, for goodness' sake, bring a lot of fal-neys, and the Engadine was as dull as a ditch de-lals with you," he said to me. "Just sup-in short it was just a big ditch, a trench pose you are a private in a marching regiment and that all you have in the world must go in your kit. I hate dragging a whole lot of trunks and trash up a mountain road on the back of a wretched mule. So take only what you need for a change-some clean cuffs and collars and one or two pink and sky-blue ties to make you look nice at table d'hôte." (Nice, indeed, Master Tom !) "And you must have nails in your boots and a tuck or two in your petticoat, and a pair of blue spectacles, and an opera-glass slung across your shoulder like Diana's quiver. Man needs but little here below in the way of dress, and woman too if she only knew it.

driven by some Titanic plough, cried Tom, carried away on a wave of tempestuous scorn. No, no-the Alps of the Valais, the Alps of the Tyrol, the Alps of Italy-these were the happy hunting-grounds where living was cheap and the people frank and friendly and free-spoken, where we could listen to the marmot and watch the lämmer-geier, where bears and chamois and ibex still gave local colour to the landscape.

Then Tom knew by heart all the delightful old towns, with their steep roofs and quaint gables, which we must take by the way. He gave us quite graciously the choice of three routes. We might go by Rouen, or by

Treves, or by Nuremberg. If we went through France there was Dieppe, with its shelly beach and white cliffs against a background of bluest sky, and Norman crosses and Norman ponies, and queer fishermen with wide-spreading picturesque nets, and queerer fisherwomen with high caps and sharp sand-eel spades; and marvels of Gothic architecture at Rouen, lovely old windows and delicate lace-work in stone and lime, and imps and satyrs and saints and martyrs playing hide-and-seek among the carvings on the church doors; and the cathedral of Sens, and the towers of Tonnerre and Dru and Maçon, and old Burgundian houses and old Burgundian shrines at Dijon, to say nothing of the Gloire de Dijon itself in its glory. (And, O Bell, looking through a gateway of the cloister, into a neglected garden, we saw such a thicket of roses, such a blaze of light, as Dante Rossetti-Dante, is it not?-puts about his bewitching Venus of the Flowers.) Or we might go through Belgium and Luxemburg to Treves, with its Roman pillars and arches and baths, and to Strasburg, where the storks build their nests among the brown chimneys and stand like sentinels upon the house-tops, and so on through the rustic oldworld towns of the Black Forest to Constance or Schauffhausen. And then there was the last and the best,-the road by Cologne and Andernach and Aschaffenburg and Nurnberg and Ratisbon-the fair fertile country of the Rhine and the Danube-which would bring us down at last upon queenly Salzburg, the gateway of the Austrian Tyrol. And to think, Bell, that all this was only the prelude to the play! It was too delightful, and I could have danced from morning till night from sheer intoxication of spirits, only that would have been rather undignified for a young lady fresh from Girton.

I really cannot tell you how we got here. I know we came through France, amid a blaze of poppies and corn-flowers; and I have a dim vision of windmills and straight canals and peat-boats and prim rows of stunted poplars; and the dark fir-clad hills of the Jura began to rise before us while we were yet far off in the great plain of Burgundy; and then in the afternoon we began to crawl up the mountain-side through wood and rock and wide park-like spaces of emerald lawn; and the air was sweet with the fragrance of millions and millions and millions of white lilies-the pale Narcissus; and through open glades in the pine woods we could look down into the deep glens at our feet where picturesque steeples and high-roofed houses of a

deep sun-burnt red were dotted about among the fields. But it was after we had crossed the high table-land of the Jura-somewhere between Pontarlier and Cossonay, I think— it was getting late and the shadows were deepening in the hollows and creeping up the pine-slopes, when we beheld what papa called a beatific vision. It might be fifty miles, it might be a thousand, but far away over the blue haze of the plain, over purple peak and storm-piled cloud, we saw along the southern sky a phantom outline, softly dimpled as a baby's arm yet strong as adamant, spectral and remote in heavenly inaccessibility, yet with such a faint blush of delicate rose as may touch the cheek of a new-born spirit, all unused as yet to the slight and diaphanous vestments of the blest. "Mont Blanc !" said Tom, lifting his hat as if we had gone into church. It was almost too lovely; do y you know, Bell, I felt half inclined to cry (only Tom would have chaffed me so), and I noticed that papa was wiping his spectacles. The great mountain so mighty in its immutable repose, the flush so fragile and perishable-it had died away as we gazed-what is there in such supreme beauty that makes us sad? Papa said something in a low tone to La Beata-that's mother, you know--about time and eternity, the things seen and the things unseen, those which pass away and those which cannot be shaken; and La Beata (Tom, who is always saying things, declares that she is just half my age, but then there was no Girton, he adds, when she was a girl) laid her hand softly upon his arm and gazed wistfully into the darkness. But Tom and I, at the other end of the carriage, were now engaged in a mild, a very mild flirtation, and I could not hear exactly what passed between them.

LETTER II.-FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

DEAREST BELL,-We are having a lovely time of it. There has not been a cloud in the sky or a speck of mist on the mountains since we came here; and yet the grumblers complain that it is always wet in Switzerland. The fact is that English people come too late; after a long spell of dry weather it often breaks about the middle of August, and rains right on till October. In our own Highlands it is never quite dry, and because we have some big trees round about the house to shelter us from that pitiless inquisitor the east wind, our friends make a point of inquiring-"Don't you find it Damp?" (I wonder what they would think if I asked them whether, being such awful stupids, they didn't find themselves Dull and Dreary and

Dismal?) But in Switzerland, if you are in luck, you get well heated through before the summer is over, and Tom says that we will carry enough of sunshine home with us to last us till spring. Now, Bell, where was I when I left off? Just outside Lausanne, was it not? The terrace at the Hotel Gibbon is far nicer than anything at Ouchy. You have no idea how nice it is to sit there in the cool of the evening under the trees and watch the moonlight on the lake at your feet, and fancy that you are Gibbon finishing his "Decline and Fall," for it was here, just on such a night, that he wrote the last words of that overwhelming history. (It overwhelmed us at least, dear, did it not?) I am not going to tell you anything about our visit to Chamonix; for, though they have built a great new hotel at Montanvert above the Mer de Glace, we did not care much about it-it ought to be on the other side of the valley, from whence the whole range of the Mont Blanc Aiguilles are seen in one stately group holding royal court around their king. We went across the Tête Noir to the Rhone Valley, and, though the Rhone Valley, with its flies and its frogs, is quite detestable, the valleys that run into it from the south are awfully nice. Evolina and Zinal and the Arpitetta Alp and St. Luc and the Bella Tola and the Meiden Pass and the lonely Turtman Thal and the little inn at Gruben under the glaciers of the Weisshorn, are places to dream about. It is such fun wading through the snow. If you had seen La Beata and me, with our gaiters on and our skirts kilted up, scrambling up the Bella Tola, or holding on like grim death to the guide as we glissaded down the steep snow slope on the other side of the Meiden into the Turtman Valley, what would you have thought of us, I wonder? I have lost my heart to the Weisshorn-from the Bella Tola it is faultless-it dazzles one with its perfect symmetry and absolute grace-it is, papa says, the queen among mountains, as the Venus of Milo (which we saw in the Louvre) is queen among women. And now, Bell, you must understand that after one more terrific scramble across the Augstbord Pass we came down upon St. Niklaus (where there are such nice people at the inn), and then up the Nicolai Thal to Zermatt and the Riffel, the special country of that benevolent despot, Monsieur Seiler. The Riffel is the first of our Alpine resting places.

LETTER III.-FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

contrast to Tom. He draws a little, and he writes a little, and he smokes a little, and he walks a little, and he talks a little, and he lies about on the grass in the sunshine the rest of the day. The Riffel is the most eligible place in the world for lying on the grass. So Mr. Mowbray-Raphael Mowbray-stays a good deal at the Riffel. He has driven Tom nearly frantic by his incurable indolence, and by— but you shall hear all about it by-and-by. I wish you were here, my dear-to have two young men on one's hand, the one as lazy as the day is long, the other boiling over with morbid activity, is too much for one girl. We could manage them so nicely between us, Bell; as it is, the situation is a little mixed.

I really cannot say how (I mean under what conditions) I like the Riffel best. It is very delightful when La Beata and I seat ourselves on the terrace, round which the Matterhorn, the Dent Blanche, and the Weisshorn, and ever so many sharp-cutting peaks draw a wonderful semicircle, with our work after breakfast; still more so after table d'hôte, when wrapped up to the ears in our seal skins-for the air grows chilly the moment the sun is hidden-we come out to have a chat with the guides, and to see the mist surging up the valley, and the lights of Zermatt twinkling through the gloom. I love the twilight always and everywhere; but here it adds mystery to mystery-one cannot tell which is solid land and which is cloud-landas I look over the terrace into that cloudy deep I remember how the Blessed Damozel in Rossetti's poem looked over the battlements of heaven.

"Is that you, Miss Maxwell?" and a dim figure begins to make itself palpable through the gloom, until it seats itself on the wall beside me. "You looked like a spirit in the darkness. I could have fancied that you were just a wave of the mist that would float away as I approached."

I said something about being far too solid and prosaic for a spirit; whereupon he replied that he was quite happy to hear me say so, for the solid and prosaic just suited him, and as a rule he didn't much care for spirits. And then we had a long talk about ghosts-do you know, Bell, he has one in his family?— not a ghost that frightens you out of your wits, but a picturesque and attractive apparition, with long black hair and such eyes, "not unlike yours, Miss Maxwell, if you will permit me to say so."

This was pretty well for the first week, MR. MOWBRAY is the greatest positive Bell? and I must say for a young gentleman

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