Mr. Tulliver.-But I doubt, Luke, they'll be for getting rid o' Ben, and making you do with a lad—and I must help a bit wi' the mill. You'll have a worse place.

Luke.-Ne'er mind, sir, I shan't plague mysen. I'n been wi' you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin' for 'em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God A'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces, I can't —you niver know but what they 'll gripe you.

It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way.

A feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it.

I don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely-I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.

Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse.

Love gives insight, and insight often gives foreboding.

I think of too many things-sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for classic literature, and mediæval literature, and modern literature; I flutter all ways, and fly in

none.

-0

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures—I long to be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I want. That is pain to me, and always will be pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes.

Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with love: he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for him.

You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature.

It is a way of eking out one's imperfect life and being three people at once-to sing and make the piano sing, and hear them both all the while-or else to sing and paint.

'The Creation' has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the birthday fête of a German Grand-Duke. ~

Miss Maggie.-I think you never read any book but the Bible-did you, Luke?

Luke (the miller).—Nay, Miss—an' not much o' that. I'm no reader, I aren't.

Maggie.—But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I've not got any very pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe' —that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know-and one sitting on a barrel.

Luke.-Nay, Miss, I'n. no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i' knowin' about them.

Maggie. But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke— we ought to know about our fellow-creatures.

Luke.-Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss ;

all I know-my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my wheat wi’out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo-an' rogues enoowi'out lookin' i' books for 'em.

Maggie.-O, well, perhaps you would like 'Animated Nature' better-that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sun-fish, and a bird sitting on its tail-I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you

like to know about them, Luke?

Luke.-Nay, Miss, I 'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn-I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows-knowin' everything but what they 'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets.

I can't think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes you look best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now. But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the elbows. Now, if I were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite unnoticeable—I should be a mere rag.—Lucy Deane.

I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says 'thank you.' It's rather hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation-don't you think so, Miss Tulliver?-Stephen Guest.

Lucy Deane.-Well, it will not go on much longer, for the bazaar is to take place on Monday week.

Stephen Guest.-Thank heaven! Kenn himself said the other day, that he didn't like this plan of making vanity do the work of charity; but just as the British public is not reasonable enough to bear direct taxation, so St. Ogg's has not got force of motive enough to build and endow schools without calling ir the force of folly.

Them fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and then hide it with a bib.-Mrs. Tulliver.

It's dreadful to think on, people playing with their own insides in that way! And it's flying i' the face o' Providence; for what are the doctors for, if we aren't to call 'em in?—Mrs. Pullet.

Mrs. Tulliver.-There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy-never two summers alike. Mrs. Pullet.—Ah, it's the way i̇' this world.

END OF THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.'