developed district of Stuccovia; and a plausible house-agent persuaded us that the Star of Fashion, moving westward, would soon shed its lustre over Stucco Square. Well-we have now lived there a good many years, and that desired luminary has not yet made its appearance. Meanwhile my chances of succeeding to the Baronetcy and the splendours of Proudflesh Park become each year more remote. The intervening life, once fondly believed to be unsound, has proved to be not only durable but pre-eminently productive, and a numerous progeny of superfluous cousins now interposes itself between me and the fulfilment of my early dreams.

When first we settled in Stucco Square, Selina and I clung desperately to the traditions in which we had been reared. We remembered, in season and out of season, that we belonged to 'The County,' and we strained every nerve to retain our territorial connections. But gradually the dismal truth was borne in upon us that 'The County' stood for very little in the social economy of London. The magnates of Loamshire are but sparing and infrequent cultivators of the town. Three or four of our Baronets, indeed, take furnished houses in Queen's Gate or Stanhope Gardens for two months after Easter, and our Lord Lieutenant generally comes up for the opening of Parliament to a sepulchral mansion in the vicinity of the Marble Arch, which has not been repapered since the days of his great grandfather. An annual dinner in Bryanston Square, a Sunday luncheon in Queen's Gate, and three tea-parties in Stanhope Gardens represent the sum-total of the hospitality which we receive from 'The County.' And by degrees we began to realise that it would be easier, wiser, and perhaps more profitable to accommodate ourselves to our environment. It was the beginning of a new life. The first cousin of a Baronet and the daughter of Mrs. Topham-Sawyer cannot forget that they have had elsewhere their setting, and come from afar. But we have learned that the less we talk about Loamshire the better our friends are pleased, and we have ceased to trail our clouds of territorial glory before the disgusted eyes of our Stuccovian neighbours. In fine, we have become merged in the Great Middle Class. We cultivate the friendliest relations with the Soulsbys and the Barrington-Bounderleys, and we are fain to admit that the Cashingtons give the best dinners in Stuccovia. But, though our associations are no longer in the least degree aristocratic, we flatter ourselves that we still are fashionable; and as the high Midsummer pomps

come on,' we scan the journals of fashion with absorbing eagerness for social openings. This year it is rather a hopeless quest. One morning, early in May, I observed that Selina was more than usually absorbed in the perusal of her favourite newspaper - Classy Cuttings.' It is a pleasant print, and I have often derived entertainment from its Answers to Correspondents.

Pussy. We hardly know how to advise you about your ormolu weddingpresents. Perhaps, grouped together on one table, they might be useful as an effect of colour.

GIRLIE. If you are blonde, your five o'clock tea-service should be blue; if brunette, pink.

TO COLLECTORS.

A lady, having artificial teeth to dispose of, would exchange them for paste shoe-buckles. No reasonable offer refused.

But Selina is intolerant of frivolity, and I could see with halfaverted eye that her reading displeased her. Before long she broke out in a high and rather querulous tone, 'Listen to this, Bertha.'

'The fiat has gone forth that there are to be no Drawing Rooms or Levees this year, and, furthermore, though this has not been publicly announced, the muchtalked-of Court for the reception of the Diplomatic Corps and the higher official world will not be held either. The King has evidently every intention that the mourning shall not be interrupted for six months at least. It is also now clearly understood for the first time that no official parties will be given. The Cabinet Ministers have had a direct intimation from the King that such is his desire, and no doubt they are more than ready to accept a decree which will save them much trouble and expense. Dinner-parties, however, do not come under the ban. Mr. Balfour is giving a series of dinners, and there have been several at Lansdowne House.'

Bertha and I sighed and looked grave, but it was the merest hypocrisy; and Bertha, who, in spite of her sex, has some sense of the ludicrous, shared my silent amusement at Selina's assumed distress. The fiat announced in 'Classy Cuttings' has not the remotest bearing on our happiness or gaiety. Of course Selina was presented on her marriage by the wife of the head of my family, and for several years she toiled dutifully to the Drawing Room. But we were never asked to the Balls or the Concerts, nor even to the Garden Parties at Marlborough House; so her enthusiasm for courtly pageants has declined, and she has no more notion of ordering herself a new train than a diamond tiara. As to the Levee, what the tailor euphemistically calls the lower part of my chest has undergone a considerable development since I lived in London, and my uniform as a D.L. of Loamshire would now be a world too narrow. In a 'Court for the reception of the Diplomatic Corps and the Higher Official World' we should obviously have no place. Mr. Balfour is not in the habit of asking us to dinner; and the only occasion on which we ever saw the inside of Lansdowne House was a charity bazaar. So on the whole the proclamation of 'Classy Cuttings' left us pretty much where it found us; but we thought it decorous to look disappointed; and we set about searching for social joys to take the place of those which were denied to us.

The Private View of the Academy is always a great event in the life of Stuccovia, and this year we had a special interest in it, for the exhibition contained a portrait of our M.P., Mr. BarringtonBounderley, subscribed for by his political admirers, and destined to adorn the Constitutional Club of our district. Somehow the subscriptions ran short, for Stuccovia is not a giving neighbourhood, and the commission was entrusted to a broken-down kinsman of the Soulsbys, who had known better days, as the phrase is, and had learnt his art in that 'gentlemanly' school which Miss Braddon has so feelingly described.

You put a crimson curtain behind your subject, and you put a bran-new hat or a roll of paper in his right hand, and you thrust his left hand in his waistcoatthe best black satin, with a strong light in the texture-and you made your subject look like a gentleman. Yes, if he was a chimney-sweep when he went into your studio, he went out of it a gentleman. But nowadays a gentlemanly portrait of a county member, with a Corinthian pillar and a crimson curtain, gets no more attention than a bishop's half-length of black canvas.

Whether the artist succeeded in making Joe Bounderley look like a gentleman is a point on which I reserve my opinion, for I know that if I expressed it, Selina would say 'That is simply jealousy, because Mr. Bounderley looks so much younger than you.'

But Art for Art's sake, as the critics say, does not really interest Stuccovia; and what we honestly enjoy is a little local excitement. This has lately been supplied in two very unexpected forms. St. Ursula's has never been considered Ritualistic. Mr. Soulsby, as I have said before, avows himself of the 'Deep Church;' is a loyal upholder of episcopal authority, and cultivates the goodwill of all dignitaries, both in Church and State. Still he prides himself on moving with the movement of the time; and I fancy that he is not wholly insensible to the pressure brought to bear upon him by my Ritualistic wife and sister-in-law, and other parochial ladies who sympathise and symbolise with them. Be this as it may, he has lately introduced

ceremonial developments, and these have produced the very unexpected result of a visit and lecture from the Wickliffe Preachers. That I may not misrepresent the tone and tactics of these eminent religionists, I transcribe the report of their proceedings in Stuccovia from a theological magazine :

The subject of 'The Roman Mass in the English Church' was dealt with by Mr. Kensit, junior, in the Athenæum Hall. There was a large and crowded audience, including a section of Ritualists, who made matters somewhat unpleasant by the diffusion of obnoxious-smelling chemicals, but the audience endured it all, and it served to put vigour and life into the apathetic ones. illustration of the lecture the priest's vestments, together with his incense, sacring bell, and wafers, were exhibited, and it formed a capital object-lesson.

In

That the object-lesson should have elicited no more formidable protests than 'obnoxious-smelling chemicals' speaks well for the long-suffering of St. Ursula's Parish; and, as 'Blazer' Bumpstead was seen prowling about the entrance hall, the avoidance of a physical contest seems little less than miraculous. But indeed an almost sickly tolerance of opinions the most divergent from our own has of late begun to infect the atmosphere of Stuccovia.

It surely is a parlous sign of the times when, in a district so eminently genteel and patriotic as ours, it is found possible to hold a Pro-Boer Meeting. A year ago, strong in our righteous cause and our superior numbers, we should have broken the head of a South African delegate as heartily as the bravest citizens of Scarborough, or the merriest Medical Students in Trafalgar Square. The choirmen of St. Ursula's would have stood shoulder to shoulder with the strappers from the livery-yard, and I shrewdly suspect that 'Blazer' Bumpstead would have organised the fray. Today the meeting is held in the lecture-room of the Parochial Club. Mr. Soulsby presides; and Mr. Bounderley sends a letter imploring his friends to give the speaker a fair hearing. Mr. Soulsby, turning to scorn with lips divine the falsehood of extremes, mellifluously enunciates the doctrine that there are probably at least two sides to almost every question; and, without wishing to commit himself or to prejudge, he hails the 'League of Liberals for the Disintegration of the Empire' as being, in the Baconian sense, a light-bearing institution. Under the auspices of the League to-night's meeting is held. Let us listen, if not with agreement at least with sympathy and respect, to the eminent Batavian who has come to plead the cause of his brethren in the South African Republics.

And then we launch out on a shoreless sea of humanitarian

eloquence which I do not intend to iterate. My wife, who is true to the political traditions of her family, is inclined to denounce the whole affair as 'Stuff.' Wreathed in primroses, she accompanied Mrs. Barrington-Bounderley to the Albert Hall on May 8. She knows that the Boers are horrid people, who do not wash, and who sleep six in a bed. On the other hand, she once danced with Sir Alfred Milner when he was a Scholar of Balliol, and not long ago she sate two off Mr. Chamberlain at a dinner-party at the Cashingtons'. So all her sympathies are on the right side; but I can see breakers ahead which threaten my domestic peace. Bertha, who is always the slave of the last word, has taken to reading 'The Commonwealth.' She has conceived a vehement dislike of Capitalists, and is persuaded that, if social order is ever. to be restored in South Africa, the task must be entrusted to the Christian Social Union. So she waves her tear-dewed handkerchief, and applauds the Batavian's rhetoric; while Bumpstead, whom I should have taken for a True Blue Englishman and a wholesome Tory, sits in her pocket and echoes her applause. What I see Selina also sees. I catch her eye, and tremble for the