before him, and they were lit up by as strange and new a light as
that which was beginning to shine over the world outside. New fancies
seemed to awake with the new dawn. For himself to ask Wenna Rosewarne
to be his wife! Could he but win the tender and shy regard of her eyes
he would fall at her feet and bathe them with his tears. And if this
wonderful thing were possible--if she could put her hand in his
and trust to him for safety in all the coming years they might live
together--what man of woman born would dare to interfere? There was a
blue light coming in through the shutters. He went to the window:
the topmost leaves of the trees were quivering in the cold air far up
there in the clearing skies, where the stars were fading out one by
one, and he could hear the sound of the sea on the distant beach, and
he knew that across the gray plain of waters the dawn was breaking,
and that over the sleeping world another day was rising that seemed to
him the first day of a new and tremulous life, full of joy and courage
and hope.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ON THE VIA SAN BASILIO.

In Rome, 1851; a cold, dreary day in December--one of those days in
which a man's ambition seems to desert him entirely, leaving only its
grinning skeleton to mock him. Depressing as was the weather to a man
who had cheerfulness as a companion by which to repel its blustering
attacks, and raise his mind above the despondency it was calculated
to produce, how much more so to one whose hope had gone out as a
flickering lamp in a sudden gust of wind, and the sharp steel of whose
ambition had turned to pierce his own heart!

Such a man, on the day mentioned, was walking along the Via San
Basilio. He was small in stature, poorly clad, and so thin, and
even cadaverous, that the casual observer might have been under
apprehension lest a gust of wind a little stronger than the average
might blow him entirely away; yet his air and manner were proud and
haughty, and what little evidences of feeling peered through the signs
of dissipation too apparent on his naturally attractive face were
those of genuine refinement. He was accompanied by a cicerone, or
servant, as villainous-looking a fellow as one often meets, even in
Italy, where an evil expression is so often seen stamped on handsome
features.

Along the Via San Basilio the two men walked until they stood opposite
the door of No. 51. Sacred ground this, and historical as well. Art
had her votari