were wet with tears as he raised his head. "I shall never
forget you: you are nobleness itself," he said. "God bless and prosper
you, Miss Linton!" Then he went.

That is all, all, and life is where it was a month ago; only, "I wear
my rue with a difference." He was my inferior. I was higher and nobler
and purer than he, but I loved him, and the greatest joy I could know
would have been to lead my life with him. So it is over, and this book
had best be put away. I will go back to my old life, and see what I
can make of it. I am glad to have known what love meant: I shall be
gladder after a while, when this ache is over. If he could but have
loved me as I loved him--if he could! But he could not, and it was not
to be. I must learn to be again a strong-minded woman.

_Letter from Henry Lawrence to George Manning._

DEAR GEORGE: I'm off for Europe to-morrow. I behaved _like a man_ and
broke the whole thing off. She behaved like a man too, told me how
much she loved me, and then accepted the position. I feel like a girl
who has jilted a fellow, and it's a very poor way to feel. Never flirt
with a strong-minded woman. I believe she cared for me, and I think
very likely when I'm fifty I shall think I was a fool not to have
braved it out and married her. I'm sure if I don't think it then,
I shall when I reach the next world; but then, like the girl in
Browning's poem, "she will pass, nor turn her face."

I feel very blue, and I think I'd better ask Alice to marry me. Yours,
H.L.

MARSHALL NEIL.

THE KING OF BAVARIA.

Of all the prominent personages who, through their official position
or individual power, or both combined, occupy at present the eye
of the public, probably not one is more unjustly criticised or
more generally misunderstood than Ludwig II., king of Bavaria. As
a reigning monarch, young, handsome, secluded in his habits and
unmarried, he is of course exposed to all the inquisitive observation
and exaggerated gossip which the feminine curiosity and masculine envy
of a court and capital can supply--gossip which is eagerly listened
to by the annual crowd of foreigners who spend a few days in Munich
to visit the Pinakothek, listen to a Wagner opera, and catch, if
possible, a glimpse of the romantic young king; and is by them carried
home to find public circulation at third hand through the columns of
sensation newspapers. And when to this personal criticism is added
the strife of opinion over his po