frightful one, and was thought such a rarity, that the people who had taken him, pitched a tent for him on the beach, and charged sixpence admission to visitors, anxious to view him in his captured state, in a large tub of salt-water. Poor creature, he died after a two days' exhibition! "Now, Eleanor, I begin to be as tired of the Parade as of the Castle. So let us move on, At one end of it you descend by a flight of steps to the beach, and at once find yourself in a different world. No more ladies, either sick or gay, no more astronomers, nor showmen. But sailors, boats, fishmongers' stalls, nets spread out to be dried or be mended, windlasses drawn up by patient horses, men, women, and children, all busy or idle over some pursuit connected with fishing, fishing-tackle, sails, and ropes. And here I am completely puzzled what to choose for your amusement." "You can't mean that there is nothing amusing there. If you were to say that, I couldn't believe you, aunt." "But I said nothing of the kind. On the contrary, my difficulty is among so many interesting things, to guess which you would prefer me to talk about." 66 All, aunt." Aye, but there is such a thing as a choice too. For instance, if you are fond of sketching, I should never get you away from those noble dark boats, built for hard seas and rough landing, and the earringed fishermen lounging about them. You would be finding more studies than a month's stay would enable you to complete, and would go into extravagant raptures over certain tall, narrow, woodplanked houses, blackened with pitch, which are run up as a shelter for the coils of ropes and sails. The effect of these slim, dark cots, when caught in contrast either with the grey cliff or the blue sky, is so remarkable, that no one with half an artist's eye could fail to remark it. To a sketcher, therefore, I should bid good-bye for the day, if I once got one there. But how is it with you, Eleanor? shall we go on ?" "On, at all events now, though the idea of that scene would be perfectly enough to make me long to go to the place, even if it contained nothing else, and was as stupid as Hastings." "Good! Now setting aside the picturesque appearance of these sailors, they are a very curious race. Their fathers were most of them genuine smugglers, and the sons in their early youth have shared in some of those forbidden adventures. Only mention the word smuggling, and you see such a curl of the lip and suppressed smile, as betray what a mine you are treading upon. I remember one who was out with your uncle and myself in a boat one day, whom your uncle encouraged and coaxed until he told us wonderful tales of his early days. Impudent escapes, and the landing of kegs of illicit spirits in spite of the utmost vigilance of a very vigilant coast-guard, who in one particular case fairly outwitted themselves. The man rowed us in sight of the very spot where the adventure happened. The smugglers had discovered that their intention of landing the spirits somewhere had been detected, so they sent off two or three decoy boats, with a few men in each, to different places where it was likely they would be expected to land, and having in this manner lured away to various places the whole of the preventive staff, they made at once for the now deserted preventive station itself, a house lying in a hollow between cliffs. And there they actually landed their booty and made their way through the preventive officers' gardens, carrying the kegs triumphantly with them into the country, and actually cutting some of the best cabbages in the garden as they passed through, as a bonne bouche for supper! You should have seen the sailor's grin of exultation as he related this feat, and, despite all my loyalty and love of submission to constituted authority, I found myself so deeply interested for the fate of that smuggling expedition, that I breathed freer again when I found how satisfactorily successful it was." “Oh, I don't wonder a bit, aunt! There is surely nothing so very wrong in smuggling, after all." "You mean that buying and selling spirits without paying duty to the king of your country is not forbidden in the Ten Commandments?-Eh, Eleanor?" "Well, I suppose that is what I do mean. It seems to me to be quite different from any real sin like murder.” "That is, of course, what smugglers think, and that is the argument I have heard them use in defence of their trade, -that there is nothing really wrong in it." "Nor is there. Is there, aunt?" "If we were solitary and not gregarious animals, I should say, no, too, Eleanor. But inasmuch as for mutual convenience and happiness we agree in living together under a social system, we are bound by the laws of that system even when they forbid our doing things not in themselves wrong; that is, not expressly forbidden by the laws of God." "But supposing there is injustice in thus forbidding those things, or that it was a stupid error in judgment?" "But who is to judge of that, Eleanor? Not each individual for himself, surely! All social systems consist of some who rule and others who obey. If you dislike the system under which you were born, you are no slave; you are free to go away and choose another system and other rulers. But wherever you pitch your tent, and receive the advantage and protection which a civilised social system affords you, there you are bound, in return, to yield obedience to constituted authorities and laws. If it were free to every member of a community to pick and choose which law it suited him to obey and which to break, a nice mess we should have in lieu of a social system. Scarcely two neighbours in a street would agree in what they would obey and disobey, and the system would soon get as many black marks of disapprobation upon it as as the painter's picture." "What was that, aunt? I have forgotten, if I ever knew." "I think you must have heard the story; it is so old. Disgusted with the absurd criticisms of ignorant judges, an old painter once offered one of his finest paintings to public inspection, announcing that every one was at liberty to make a black charcoal cross on any part of the picture which was considered faulty and wanted correction. The room was thrown open, and the painter absented himself; but, when he returned at night, the whole picture was a mass of black charcoal crosses, not a bit of the painting could be seen! Everybody had found fault with something. If you had been the painter, how should you have felt, Eleanor?" "In despair, I think, aunt. Among so many people there must have been some good judges. I should really suppose the picture must have had a great many faults. Do you know how the painter felt and what he did ?" "He took a handkerchief and wiped the whole of the black charcoal crosses out, Eleanor." "Not one. "My dear aunt! and did not make one correction?" But the next day he offered the picture to public inspection once more, requesting his kind friends, the judges, to put a white chalk cross on any part of the picture which they particularly admired, and felt sure was particularly good. I need not go on. You can guess the result, I am sure, with your lively imagination." "Yes, I do, though. The picture was as white the second night as it had been black the first; and so much for variety of opinion, Eleanor! I assure you, it would never answer to give up social systems, any more than pictures, to the chimerical whims of the multitude. And being bound to obey the laws of that particular social system under which we shelter and live, we certainly do sin in breaking through those laws, even when the law is not one laid down in the Decalogue. The sin may not be of that heinous character which theft and murder involve, but we must not grumble that it lays us open to temporal punishment; nor forget either, that submission to rulers is one of the virtues which our Saviour both enjoined and practised.-But, really, Eleanor, we must talk of something else. Everything makes me sleepy after a time. I am as tired now of the smugglers as I was of the old Castle and the Parade. What comes next?" (To be continued.) LIFE'S LESSON. "Books in the running brooks."-SHAKSPEARE. UNDER the bowering honeysuckle, On its stream, Netting a gauzy maze Where the shingles gleam, |