ever found in the wide world of story-book life.

But Scott's young people never seem to hunger for embraces. They allow the most splendid opportunities to slip by without a single caress. When Quentin Durward rescues the Countess Isabella at the siege of Liége, he does not pause to passionately kiss her cold. lips; he gathers her up with all possible speed, and makes practical plans for getting her out of the way. When Edith Bellenden visits her imprisoned lover, no thought of kissing enters either mind. Henry Morton is indeed so overcome by "deep and tumultuous feeling" that he presses his visitor's "unresisting hands;" but even this indulgence is of brief duration. Miss Bellenden quickly recovers her hands, and begins to discuss the situation with a great deal of sense and good feeling. Henry Bertram does not appear to have stolen a single kiss from that romantic and charming young woman, Julia Mannering, in the whole course of their clandestine courtship; and the propriety of Lord Glenvarloch's behavior, when shut up in a cell with pretty Margaret Ramsay, must be remembered by all. Naething

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for you to sniggle and laugh at, Steenie," observes King James reprovingly to the Duke of Buckingham, when that not immaculate nobleman betrays some faint amusement at the young Scotchman's modesty. "He might be a Father of the Church, in comparison of you, man."

In the matter of venison pasties, however, we have a different tale to tell. There are probably ten of these toothsome dishes to every kiss, twenty of them to every burst of tears. Compare Quentin Durward as a fighter to Quentin Durward as a lover, and then, by way of understanding how he preserved his muscle, turn back to that delightful fourth chapter, where the French King plays the part of host at the famous inn breakfast. So admirably is the scene described in two short pages, so fine is the power of Scott's genial human sympathy, that I have never been able, since reading it, to cherish for Louis XI. the aversion which is his rightful due. In vain I recall the familiar tales of his cruelty and baseness. In vain I remind myself of his treacherous plans for poor Durward's destruction. 'Tis useless! I cannot dissociate him from that noble meal, nor

from the generous enthusiasm with which he provides for, and encourages, the splendid appetite of youth. The inn breakfast has but one peer, even in Scott's mirthful pages, and

to find it we must follow the fortunes of another monarch who masquerades to better purpose than does Maître Pierre, whose asylum is the hermitage of St. Dunstan, and whose host is the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst. The gradual progress and slow development of the holy hermit's supper, which begins tentatively with parched pease and a can of water from St. Dunstan's well, and ends with a mighty pasty of stolen venison and a huge flagon of wine, fill the reader's heart-if he has a heartwith sound and sympathetic enjoyment. It is one of the gastronomic delights of literature. Every step of the way is taken with renewed pleasure, for the humors of the situation are as unflagging as the appetites and the thirst of the revelers. Even the quarrel which threatens to disturb the harmony of the feast only adds to its flavor. Guest and host, disguised king and pretended recluse, are as ready to fight as to eat; and, with two such champions, who shall say where the palm of victory hides?