this conclusion was borne in upon me. But I know that I heard footsteps within; more than once I detected a slight "hem;" last of all there was the unmistakable grating of a chair as it was pushed across the solid oaken floor. My object now was to turn the door-handle gently and peer, unobserved if possible, into the room. It was my only way of ascertaining whether any one, and if so, what kind of a person, was there. I might have been a professional burglar, I did the trick so cleverly. I got the door opened quite artistically. There was not a rattle or a creak; everything seemed to play into my hands. Presently there was room for me to get my head through-and I looked in. What I saw was not unexpected, yet it startled me considerably. A tall female figure in white was seated at my easel, leaning over it and painting busily. I was spell-bound for the moment, and could neither go back nor forward. How long I should have remained thus it is impossible to imagine. But after a few minutes, perhaps under that strange mesmeric influence which conveys to all of us the impression that we are being watched, the female raised her head suddenly and looked round. I saw the head, with its face half-concealed, of Lady Dora Maxted-the same which I had seen through the window in the court the same which I knew by heart by the portrait in the great hall. She did not give me long to observe her, however. The moment our eyes met-how well I remembered those great wild brown eyes!-she rose to her feet with a startled exclamation, and glided rapidly away. It was a strange but not unearthly shout; on the contrary, it had a distinctly human intonation, and was not without a tinge of mockery and laughter. I rushed into the room, and gave chase. All the doors of the rooms en suite were open-had they been left so purposely ?-and the figure on passing through the first banged it behind her. This gave her the advantage, and increased the distance between us. It was the same with the next door, and the next; still I was close behind her, and might eventually have overtaken her had the race been a little longer. But the last door was that into the turret with its winding stairs. This she also banged behind her, and I distinctly heard the bolts shot in the lock, accompanied by another sound, that of suppressed laughter. She was gone. I struck a light then, tried the door, shook it repeatedly, but it withstood all my efforts. I knew that I had failed, yet I was not dissatisfied with my adventure. At least I had driven my tormentor off the field, even if she had left no trace behind her. No trace? There I was mistaken. The ghost, or whatever she might be, in her hurried exit had lost one of her shoes, and there it lay just where she had disappeared,—a pretty, dainty, artistically made high-heeled shoe. I took it up and examined it closely by the candle-light. It might have been the property of some supernatural personage, but it gave me a very distinct impression that it had just fallen from a human foot. There was nothing shadowy or unsubstantial about it; it was made of good honest purple kid, adorned with a fresh rosette of crimson ribbon, and lined within with soft pink silk. That I held in my hand a clue, however, to the mystery of Maxted Manor, I was more and more convinced as I turned over and inspected my high-heeled shoe. It was not till I had carried the shoe up-stairs to my room and had made a second inspection, that I discovered names and a number stamped upon the sole. The names were somewhat blurred, but I made out at length what read like Brogue and Brodequin, 295 New Bond street. Below, at some distance, were the numerals 379663. The names, of course, were those of the makers, the number that of the customer's last. I surely might ascertain from the shoemakers whether this customer was a denizen of this or another world. Full of this idea, I walked over to Blueborough next morning and telegraphed to a friend in town to go to Bond street and inquire. If Messrs. Brogue and Brodequin made any difficulties, I determined to proceed to London myself and prosecute the search. This accomplished, I breakfasted at the hotel, and then returned to Maxted, leaving word at the telegraph office to send me over any message that might arrive. My road back to the Manor House led me past the gardener's cottage. As I passed, it occurred to me that I might perhaps extract something from old Ducks, and I paused in front of his door. As I did so, I caught sight of a face at the window up-stairs,-the face of a young girl, as I thought,but the moment I looked up it disappeared. Ducks was not in, nor was his wife seemingly. I called to them both, but no one replied. I was turning to leave the cottage, when I heard heavy clattering footsteps descending the stair. I waited, and presently a young woman entered the kitchen parlor, and walked straight up to me. In spite of the heavy brogues which I had heard and now saw, I was fairly taken aback, for I did not remember to have ever met a prettier girl. She was tall and shapely, and had a noble, a strikingly noble and handsome face, with bright curls rippling over a sunny brow, and large brown eyes full of expression. There was breeding in every feature. A lady surely, although so quietly, not to say shabbily, dressed. But the plain drab frock of dark homespun fitted her figure perfectly, and the pink ribbons in her hair and at her throat, if faded, were yet arranged with the taste that argued a cultured mind. than by their resemblance to another pair I had seen only the night before. It was she who put an end to the pause by once more saying, "You'd better be ganging," and pointing with her thumb to the door. Of course, I could not well stay at the cottage, and I could not well tax her with having been a party to the annoyance I had endured at the Manor Housenot, at least, without more evidence than I had just then. So I said good-bye civilly, and turned on my heel. Just outside the house I encountered the telegraph boy on a pony. He had just trotted over from Blueborough with my answer. I tore open the yellow envelope and read: "Have seen shoemakers; no difficulty. Three hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and sixty-three, number of Miss Judith Maxted's Then she spoke, and all poetry, all sentiment, from a mischievous desire to try my courage, had vanished. "What's your wull ?" she said in the sweetest voice, marred by the most atrocious northern burr; "Oi canna help ye, can oi?" "I was looking for old Ducks." "Oncle's out; so's aunt. What's your wull?" "How is it I have never seen you before? Do you always stay here with the Ducks?" I felt rather disposed to hold her in conversation. "Na; I'm only biding for a wee. Oi'm soon ganging whoam." She stopped, and, looking me full in the face for a moment, said, abruptly, " And you'd better be ganging too. You may'nt bide here." "Well, perhaps you're right; tell your uncle I'll call again. I want to speak to him about something I picked up in the Manor House last night, a shoe." "I'll tell him. A shoe, eh? What like? would it fit me?" she said, sticking out a foot which seemed enormous in a coarsely-made heavy hobnailed boot. "Hardly, unless Somehow I had my suspicions about this girl. Her accent did not sound quite true; I thought it varied. She had a ring on one finger. These boots were too obviously ill-fitting. What if they had been assumed as a disguise? As these thoughts passed rapidly through my brain, I kept my eyes on hers, struck no less by their beauty been haunting the house. More, it was she herself whom I had just seen in the cottage. I hurried back, and, without knocking, hastily lifted the latch and ran in. "Who's that? How dare you come in here?" The voice was the same, but the accent was gone, and I saw my young friend trying hard to conceal something which she held in her left hand. "I beg your pardon, but I came to restore something to its owner," and I produced the shoe. "You have its fellow there in your left hand. Allow me to present you with your property, Miss Maxted." She started. "I'm not Miss Maxted. My name's Barbara Ducks. What do you mean ?" "I mean that I've found out the whole trick. You have been too hard on me. Now, of course, I shall leave the house." "No, no," she said, "it was only a foolish escapade. I am extremely grateful to you for having put an end to the ghosts in the statechamber, and now I will go away myself, and you will be troubled no more. To make a brief conclusion to this long tale, I may say at once that she did leave Maxted Manor that evening. I stayed on till the end of October. But that winter I renewed my acquaintance with her under pleasanter auspices in London, and the following summer we returned to the Manor House in a new relationship. 4 HECTOR BERLIOZ. BY CHARLOTTE ADAMS. HECTOR BERLIOZ, the great French composer, | later mingled with a passionate love of Weber is still but little known in America. Indeed, it is and Beethoven. On these three great models he only since his death, in 1869, that France herself formed himself, and it is fair to suppose that the has accorded to him a position among the first of consequent productions of his genius, with the her musical geniuses. His life was passed in a addition of his own fiery originality, would not struggle for recognition, the endeavor to revolu- meet with the approval of pseudo-classicists like tionize the musical systems of France and to Boieldieu and Cherubini. introduce his robust and colossal theories of harmony into her orchestral methods. The friend of Heinrich Heine, he bore a strong resemblance in character to the poet, in the bitterness and cynicism of his disposition, his perpetual antagonism with the world, his brooding and sneering contempt of his enemies. The grotesque and the weird, the graceful and the subtle, found in his music the same utterance that Heine afforded them in his verse. Added to this, he possessed a wonderful fire, brilliancy, and daring, a remarkable sense of color, a sweeping audacity of conception and execution, which find their parallels in the mighty brushstrokes of some of the great French painters of the century, such, for instance, as Henri Régnault. Berlioz's genius is essentially French, the genius of revolution. His life was one long war with circumstance, and the lesson to be learned from it is that of patience, courage, and the great final triumph of truth and art. Hector Berlioz was born in a small town not far from Lyons, in 1803. He began to compose in childhood. At nineteen he was sent to Paris to study medicine; but he felt a profound dislike for the profession chosen for him, and he announced to his father his fixed intention of becoming a musician, and notably a composer. This led to a quarrel and finally a rupture with his family, who withdrew all means of support from him. For several years he studied in Paris, suffering every privation, and supporting himself by teaching the principles of his art, and singing in the chorus of a theatre. The first public performance of a work of his took place in 1825,the rendition of a mass in the church of San Roch. Most of his work up to this time had been pronounced worthless by the leading musicians of His first enthusiasm was for Gluck, which At last there came a change in his circumstances. In 1828 he won the second prize for composition at the Conservatoire, and, two years later, the first prize, which gave him the privilege of two years' study in Rome and a certain sum of money. In Rome he lived for a short time on terms of intimate companionship with young Mendelssohn, who, however, failed to recognize in the stormy French youth the absolute genius of the future, and wrote, in one of his letters to his mother, that Berlioz was without a spark of talent. These two composers, these contrasts of musical art, did not meet until Berlioz, in his mature manhood, set out on that journey through Germany which so richly compensated him for his early sufferings. They met in Leipsic, in the full flush of their triumphs. Mendelssohn was just stepping down from the leader's desk, from which he had been directing the rehearsal of his "Walpurgis-Nacht," when Berlioz approached and greeted him. At his request Mendelssohn gave his former comrade the baton with which he had been leading, and the following day the French composer sent him his own in return. One of the great mental crises of Berlioz's life, which exerted a lasting influence upon his compositions, was the sudden revelation to him of the genius of Shakspere, through the performances of an English dramatic company, headed by a somewhat celebrated actress, who afterward became Berlioz's wife. Previous to this, like most Frenchmen, he had only known the great English poet through garbled and unintelligent translations. The influence of Shakspere gave to his talent the stamp of romanticism which belonged to the French artistic development in the first half of the century. The best of his early works are the direct musical interpretation of Shakspere's themes, such as the "Overture to King Lear," overwhelmed him with praise. It was at his and the symphony of "Romeo and Juliet," while instance that Berlioz composed the famous symthe robust form and brilliant verve of his entire phony of "Harold in Italy." It grew out of a artistic utterance owe much to the impetus given desire expressed by Paganini that Berlioz should him by the study of Shakspere's colossal combi- write something for the viola. Five years later, at nations. the close of a concert given by Berlioz, at which Heine said of Berlioz that his music had in it "Harold" was played, Paganini, being unable to something primeval and gigantic. He called the composer, as Berlioz himself tells us, "a colossal nightingale; a lark of eagle's size." One of his earliest friends and appreciators was Paganini. Berlioz was then stili a struggling musician, absolutely penniless, and but just married to the woman whose poetic interpretation had revealed to him the mysteries of Shakspere, and who was penniless, like himself. He gave a concert, at which Paganini was present. At its close the great violinist sought the composer, and express his admiration by word of mouth, since the disease from which he afterward died prevented his speaking above a whisper, fell upon his knees before Berlioz on the stage among all the musicians and kissed his hand. Upon the following day Berlioz received a note from the great Italian virtuoso, in which, after telling him that "Beethoven being dead, Berlioz alone could take his place," he begged him to accept the sum of twenty thousand francs as a mark of his profound admiration. This generous, and more, magnani mous gift, so rarely paralleled in the intercourse of artists, enabled Berlioz to abandon the horrible drudgery of musical criticism and review-work by which he had been earning a scanty living, and devote himself entirely to composition. The inspiration of Shakspere and the munificence of Paganini produced in a short time the symphony of "Romeo and Juliet," thought by many to be Berlioz's greatest work. The cordiality which the musicians of other countries extended to Berlioz is in marked contrast with the frigid and jealous reserve that had been shown him from the beginning of his career by the musicians of Paris, notably the faction headed by Cherubini, who saw in him the leader of a musical revolution and a robust and vital system against which their faded harmonies could not stand ground. During his first journey through Germany he gave orchestral concerts, producing his own works and meeting everywhere with unhoped-for success. His genius lay exactly parallel with the Teutonic spirit; unlike most Frenchmen, he worshiped the musical gods of Germany, and his fount of inspiration in Shakspere was one they had been taught to revere by their own great lights of romanticism. In every city he had the musical world at his feet, and in many places the king, the princes, and the court testified their appreciation of his genius, as in Saxony, Prussia, and Hanover. It was not strange that Berlioz should regard Germany as the home of his soul. In Dresden he met Richard Wagner, who had just received the appointment of assistant leader of the orchestra to the King of Saxony. Wagner assisted Berlioz with his rehearsals, and in return received a meed of appreciation and friendly criticism from the French composer which was doubly significant, coming from an inhabitant of that musical world of Paris which had been so inhospitable to Wagner during his residence in the French capital, and remembered him only as the author of some articles published in a musical paper. It was at this time that "Rienzi" and the "Flying Dutchman" were receiving their first representations. The influence of Wagner is somewhat noticeable in a certain philosophic and intellectual treatment of the themes of some of Berlioz's later works, among others the "Damnation of Faust," composed during his second journey through Ger many and the Austrian Empire, and produced upon his return to Paris in 1846. Berlioz's progress through these various countries was a veritable triumph, paralleled only, in the personal honors shown him, by the career of the Abbé Liszt, whose friend he was. What a contrast with the life of the poor unknown boy, who had eaten his scanty dinner of dry bread and raisins at the foot of the statue of Henri Quatre, on the Pont Neuf, of Paris, brooding over the refusal of his work, and the judgment of failure passed upon himself, and the mother's curse which had followed him from the little town in the heart of France! Berlioz was, personally, of anything but a patient disposition, but the history of his life and development is surely a valuable example of the genius of patience. In the following year he went to Russia, and gave concerts in all the principal cities. The remainder of his life was passed principally in Paris, composing operas and cantatas, and works in other forms. His domestic relations were unhappy. Both his marriages contained an element of discord. The death of his only son, as old age crept over him, was the last drop of bitterness in his cup. His grand opera of the "Trojans" was, in the popular sense, a failure. The sense of the inappreciation of his countrymen preyed more keenly upon him as he grew older. He demanded a great national recognition, for which the flattery of musical dilettanti and amateurs could not compensate him. In the apathy of soul which seized upon him his thoughts turned to Germany as to the true fatherland of his genius. In his latter years he went once more to Russia, at the invitation of the Grand Duchess Helena, and the Russian court heaped honors upon his head. The sadness and bitter loneliness of his last years recall the later days of his friend Heine. Berlioz's genius died a slow death, settling by degrees into a torpor and apathy from which no enthusiasm had power to arouse him. Heine's body withered away under the slow disease that held him fast. Berlioz died in 1869. His funeral was attended by all the musicians of Paris, but it is doubtful whether they realized the greatness of the loss to French musical art or the place that Berlioz's music would take in the future. He has been dead too short a time for the world to measure him properly. In approaching a colossal statue, |