These acres of print sown broad-cast, produce a daily crop to suit every

appetite and every taste. It has winged its way from every spot on the

earth's surface, and at last settled down and arranged itself into

intelligible meaning, made instinct with ink. Now it tells of a

next-door neighbor; then of dwellers in the utter-most corners of the

earth. The black side of this black and white daily history, consists of

battle, murder, and sudden death; of lightning and tempest; of plague,

pestilence, and famine; of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; of

false doctrine, heresy, and schism; of all other crimes, casualities,

and falsities, which we are enjoined to pray to be defended from. The

white side chronicles heroism, charitableness, high purpose, and lofty

deeds; it advocates the truest doctrines, and the practice of the most

exalted virtue: it records the spread of commerce, religion, and

science; it expresses the wisdom of the few sages and shows the

ignorance of the neglected many--in fine, good and evil, as broadly

defined or as inextricably mixed in the newspapers, as they are over the

great globe itself.

With this variety of temptation for all tastes, it is no wonder that

those who have the power have also the will to read newspapers. The

former are not very many in this country where, among the great bulk of

the population, reading still remains an accomplishment. It was so in

Addison's time. "There is no humor of my countrymen," says the

Spectator, "which I am more inclined to wonder at, than their great

thirst for news." This was written at the time of imposition of the tax

on newspapers, when the indulgence in the appetite received a check from

increased costliness. From that date (1712) the statistical history of

the public appetite for news is written in the Stamp Office. For half a

century from the days of the Spectator, the number of British and Irish

newspapers was few. In 1782 there were only seventy-nine, but in the

succeeding eight years they increased rapidly. There was "great news"

stirring in the world in that interval--the American War, the French

Revolution; beside which, the practice had sprung up of giving domestic

occurrences in fuller detail than heretofore, and journals became more

interesting from that cause. In 1790 they had nearly doubled in number,

having reached one hundred and forty six. This augmentation took place

partly in consequence of the establishment of weekly papers--which

originated in that year--and of which thirty-two had been commenced

before the end of it. In 1809, twenty-nine and a half millions of stamps

were issued to newspapers in Great Britain. The circulation of journals

naturally depends upon the materials existing to fill them. While wars

and rumors of wars were rife they were extensively read, but with the

peace their sale fell off. Hence we find, that in 1821 no more than

twenty-four millions of newspapers were disposed of. Since then the

spread of education--slow as it has been--has increased the

productiveness of journalism. During the succeeding eight-and-twenty

years, the increase may be judged of by reference to the figures we have

already jotted down; the sum of which is, that during the year 1848

there were issued, for English, Irish, and Scotch newspapers, eighty-two

millions of stamps--more than thrice as many as were paid for in 1821.

The cause of this increase was chiefly the reduction of the duty from an

average of three-pence to one penny per stamp.

A curious comparison of the quantity of news devoured by an

Englishman and a Frenchman, was made in 1819, in the _Edinburgh

Review_--"thirty-four thousand papers," says the writer, are "dispatched

daily from Paris to the departments, among a population of about

twenty-six millions, making one journal among 776 persons. By this, the

number of newspaper readers in England would be to those in France as

twenty to one. But the number and circulation of country papers in

England are so much greater than in France, that they raise the

proportion of English readers to about twenty-five to one, and our

papers contain about three times as much letter-press as a French paper.

The result of all this is that an Englishman reads about seventy-five

times as much of the newspapers of his country in a given time, as a

Frenchman does of his. But in the towns of England, most of the papers

are distributed by means of porters, not by post; on the other hand, on

account of the number of coffee-houses, public gardens, and other modes

of communication, less usual in England, it is possible that each French

paper may be read, or listened to, by a greater number of persons, and

thus the English mode of distribution may be compensated. To be quite

within bounds, however, the final result is, that every Englishman reads

daily fifty times as much as the Frenchman does, of the newspapers of

his country."

From this it might be inferred that the craving for news is peculiarly

English. But the above comparison is chiefly affected by the

restrictions put upon the French press, which, in 1819, were very great.

In this country, the only restrictions were of a fiscal character; for

opinion and news there was, as now, perfect liberty. It is proved, at

the present day, that Frenchmen love news as much as the English; for

now that all restriction is nominally taken off, there are as many

newspapers circulated in France in proportion to its population, as

there are in England.

The appetite for news is, in truth, universal; but is naturally

disappointed, rather than bounded, by the ability to read. Hence it is

that the circulation of newspapers is proportioned in various countries

to the spread of letters; and if their sale is proportionately less in

this empire, than it is among better taught populations, it is because

there exist among us fewer persons who are able to read them;--either at

all, or so imperfectly, that attempts to spell them give the tyro more

pain than pleasure. In America, where a system of national education has

made a nation of readers (whose taste is perhaps susceptible of vast

improvement, but who are readers still) the sale of newspapers greatly

exceeds that of Great Britain. All over the continent there are also

more newspaper _readers_, in proportion to the number of people, though

perhaps, fewer buyers, from the facilities afforded by coffee-houses and

reading-rooms, which all frequent. In support of this fact, we need go

no farther than the three kingdoms. Scotland--where national education

has largely given the ability to read--a population of three millions

demands yearly from the Stamp Office seven and a half millions of

stamps; while in Ireland, where national education has had no time for

development, eight millions of people take half a million of stamps

_less_ than Scotland.

Although it can not be said that the appetite for mere news is one of an

elevated character; yet as we have before hinted, the dissemination of

news takes place side by side with some of the most sound, practical,

and ennobling sentiments and precepts that issue from any other channels

of the press. As an engine of public liberty, the newspaper press is

more effectual than the Magna Charta, because its powers are wielded

with more ease, and exercised with more promptitude and adaptiveness to

each particular case.

Mr. F. K. Hunt in his "Fourth Estate" remarks, "The moral of the history

of the press seems to be, that when any large proportion of a people

have been taught to read, and when upon this possession of the tools of

knowledge, there has grown up a habit of perusing public prints, the

state is virtually powerless if it attempts to check the press. James

the Second in old times, and Charles the Tenth, and Louis Philippe, more

recently, tried to trample down the Newspapers, and everybody knows how

the attempt resulted. The prevalence or scarcity of newspapers in a

country affords a sort of index to its social state. Where journals are

numerous, the people have power, intelligence, and wealth; where

journals are few, the many are in reality mere slaves. In the United

States every village has its newspaper, and every city a dozen of these

organs of popular sentiment. In England we know how numerous and how

influential for good the papers are; while in France they have perhaps

still greater power. Turn to Russia, where newspapers are comparatively

unknown, and we see the people sold with the earth they are compelled to

till. Austria, Italy, Spain, occupy positions between the extremes--the

rule holding good in all, that in proportion to the freedom of the press

is the freedom and prosperity of the people."

[From Sharpe's Magazine]

A FEW WORDS ON CORALS.

It is the object of the following papers to illustrate the natural

history of the ocean, and to introduce to the reader a few of the forms

of life which the naturalist meets with in the deep sea. The sea that

bathes the globe contains as countless multitudes of living beings as

does the land we tread, and each possesses an organization as

interesting and as peculiar to itself, as any of the higher forms of the

animal creation. But the interest does not cease here, for these marine

invertebrata play an important part in the vast economy of nature, some

living but to afford food for the larger kinds, others devouring all

matter devoid of vitality, and so removing all putrescent materials,

with which the sea would otherwise be surcharged; while others, again,

living in large communities, surely and slowly, by their gradual growth,

so alter the physical construction of the globe as to render seas and

harbors unnavigable, and in many eases even to give rise in course of

ages to those islands, apparently of spontaneous growth, which are so

common in the Southern Seas.

Corals and Madrepores first claim our attention, because they occupy the

lowest place, with the exception of sponges, in the animal scale!

Indeed, so low is their organization, that former naturalists denied

their animal character, and from superficial examination of their

external appearance, placed them among the wonders of the vegetable

world. And from the arborescent and plant-like form assumed by many

kinds, in the Flustra and others, in which the resemblance to sea-weeds

is so strong as generally to cause them to be confounded together under

the same group, and being fixed to submarine rocks, or marine shells,

observers might easily have been led to the mistake, had not modern

research rectified the error. Corals and Madrepores, as they are known

to us, consist but of the stony skeletons of the animals themselves, for

in the living state, while dwelling in the ocean, each portion of the

stony framework was covered with an animal coating of gelatinous matter,

which, closely investing it, was the living portion of the animal. But

the structure of the animal is not simply this, for attached to

different portions of it in the living state are to be found a countless

number of little cells, which, armed with tentacles of great prehensile

and tactile powers, are the apertures through which the particles of

food are conveyed for the sustenance of the animal These bodies as they

may be called, are the analogues of that simple polyp, the common hydra,

which, abounding in almost every pond, has been long known to

naturalists. It consists of a single dilated gelatinous vesicle, which

is terminated at one extremity by a sucker, and at the other by a number

of contractile filaments, which serve as the tentaculae, by which it

seizes its prey. This is all that represents the animal, the dilated

portion of the tube being the part in which the process of digestion is

carried on, and where the food is assimilated to the wants of the little

creature. These hydrae live singly, each animal being independent of

another, and each possesses the power of self-reparation; so that,

should it happen that a tentacle is lost, another sprouts to supply its

place, or should the naturalist by way of experiment divide it in half,

each portion immediately reproduces the wanting section. Such, then, is

briefly the structure of the simple fresh-water hydra, a polyp of common

occurrence, and from this description the reader will gain some idea of

the polyps of the Coral family before us; but he must remember that in

the case now under discussion, the polyps are aggregated together, a

number on one common stem, each possessing independent life, but all

ministering to the support of the compound animal.

The hydra, then, of the Coral and Madrepore, thus explained, would

appear to be the parts through which food is absorbed for the general

nourishment of the body, which, as before observed, consists simply of a

gelatinous film of animal matter, possessing but little evidence of

vitality. Here, then, is a community of nourishment, and with it also a

community of sensation, for if one portion be irritated, contiguous

portions of the animal are apt to sympathize. When the Coral polyps are

not in an active state, or in other words, when they are not in want of

food, these hydra-form polyps may not be visible, but being retracted

into cells found as depressions in the skeletons of the Madrepores, they

are lost to observation, and it is only when in quest of food and

nourishment that their contractile tentacles are expanded, and

distinctly prominent.

The physiology of the growth of the skeleton, both in the Madrepores and

the Coral, is the same. The entire skeleton, however ramified it may be,

or whatever form it may assume, is secreted by the living matter with

which it is invested, the materials for its formation being derived from

the element in which it lives; and as its deposition takes place at

different times, the central stem of some corals is apt to assume a

beautiful concentric arrangement of laminae. But the material deposited

or secreted need not necessarily be hard or calcareous, but even may

partake of the character of horn or other flexible materials, as is the

case with some of the coral family. In other cases there is an

alternation of each material; and the necessity of this change in the

character of the skeleton will now demand our attention.

The common coral of the Mediterranean, possessing a stony skeleton, is

found in situations where its stunted form and its extreme hardness

sufficiently preserve it from the violence of the waves; but place a

coral under other circumstances, and expose it to the storms of the

Indian Ocean, where the waves rage with fury, dashing on and uprooting

all things within their power, and the structure of the simple coralium

would fail to withstand their violence. Here, then, under such

circumstances, in the case of the Gorgonia, nature has provided a horny

and flexible skeleton, which, spreading majestically in the sea, shall

be capable of bending beneath the weight of the superincumbent waves,

and so yielding to the storms. Nature has thus adapted herself to each

contingent circumstance.

The next point to which we shall advert will be coral formations, which

form so interesting a study to the naturalist and geologist. When we

consider that we have at hand only a soft, gelatinous covering,

stretched on a hard, stony frame-work--that the material on which this

animal substance exists is furnished by the sea in which it lives--we

can not but be surprised at the smallness of the means which nature uses

for the execution of her great designs. But time compensates for the

insignificance of the means employed, and the continued activity of

nature's architects, during continuous ages, accomplishes these

stupendous results, which have at various times excited the wonder of

the navigator, and aroused the attention of the naturalist. Many

examples of these are to be found in the Pacific Archipelago. Seas and

shallows, once navigable, become in the process of time so filled by

these living animals, as to become impassable, their stony skeletons

forming hard, massy rocks and impenetrable barriers, which, rising from

the bottom of the sea and shallows, constitute solid masonry of living

stones.

But besides thus aggregating in the neighborhood of land and continents,

formations similarly produced are constantly met with during the

circumnavigation of the globe. Not only barriers and reefs owe their

origin to these humble means, but large lands, stretching for miles in

the centre of the ocean, rise gradually from beneath the surface of the

sea, and, becoming clothed with verdure and vegetation, at last offer a

resting-place for the daring seafarer. But now occurs the interesting

question, How happens it that these islands are found in situations

where the sea is too deep to allow of any animal life to exist? And yet

these corals must have grown upward from some resting-place. The

researches of Darwin have shown that the greatest depth in which corals

live, is between thirty and forty fathoms beneath the surface of the

sea; hence it is absolutely certain that for every island some

foundation must exist in the sea for these reef-building animals to

attach themselves to. Such foundation, from the observation of Darwin,

would appear to be provided by submarine mountains which have gradually

subsided into the sea, having originally existed above its surface. Upon

these foundations the reef-building saxigenous corals have become

attached, and slowly accumulating in large numbers, and gradually

depositing their carbonate of lime, during the lapse of ages, by degrees

construct these large piles, which, at last emerging from the ocean's

bosom, appear as newly-formed continents and islands. Once above the

surface, the work of the corals is at an end; no longer exposed to the

salt water, the emerged portion dies, and then new agencies are called

into play, before its surface can be clothed with vegetable life. The

storms of the ocean and the rising waves gradually deposit on its

surface the sand and mud torn up from the bottom of the sea, and the

sea-weed, too, that is cast upon its tenantless shores soon crumbles

into mould, and unites with the debris of the former polyps. At last,

some seeds from the neighboring lands are driven to its strand, and

there finding a soil united for their growth, soon sprout, under the

influence of a tropical sun, into fresh life, and clothe the ocean isle

with verdure and vegetation.

Then, _last_, man comes, and taking possession of the land, erects him a

house to dwell in, and cultivating the soil he finds, soon converts the

ocean-rescued land into cultivated plains. Islands thus formed are

constantly increased in circumference by the same means as those that

gave them birth; the same agency is ever at work, adding particle on

particle to the rising land. But is it not strange that such simple

means can resist the ever-flowing and roaring ocean--that such simple

animals can uprear a masonry which shall resist the violence of the

waves and defy the power of the breakers? Is it not strange that a

single polyp can form a structure in the bosom of the ocean, which shall

stand, a victorious antagonist to the storm when works of man and other

"inanimate works of nature" would have crumbled into nothing before the

relentless fury of a disturbed ocean? "Let the hurricane tear up its

thousand huge fragments, yet what will that tell against the accumulated

labor of myriads of architects at work day and night, month after

month?" for here organic force is opposed to the raging elements, and

opposing, is victorious.

[From the Dublin University Magazine]

A NIGHT IN THE BELL INN.

Though few men are themselves on visiting terms with their ancestors,

most are furnished with one or two decently-authenticated ghost stories.

I myself am a firm believer in spectral phenomena, for reasons which I

may, perhaps, be tempted to give to the public whenever the custom of

printing in folio shall have been happily revived; meanwhile, as they

will not bear compression, I keep them by me, and content myself with

now and then stating a fact saving the theory to suggest itself. Now it

has always appeared to me that the apostles of spectres (if the phrase

will be allowed me) have, like other men with a mission, been, perhaps,

a little precipitate in assuming their facts, and sometimes find "true

ghosts" upon evidence much too slender to satisfy the hard-hearted and

unbelieving generation we live in. They have thus brought scandal not

only upon the useful class to which they belong, but upon the world of

spirits itself--causing ghosts to be so generally discredited, that

fifty visits made in their usual private and confidential way, will now

hardly make a single convert beyond the individual favored with the

interview; and, in order to reinstate themselves in their former

position, they will be obliged henceforward to appear at noon-day, and

in places of public resort.

The reader will perceive, then, that I am convinced of the equal

impolicy and impropriety of resting the claims of my clients (ghosts in

general) upon facts which will not stand the test of an impartial, and

even a skeptical scrutiny. And, perhaps, I can not give a happier

illustration of the temper of my philosophy, at once candid and

cautious, than is afforded by the following relation, for every tittle

of which I solemnly pledge my character at once as a gentleman and as a

metaphysician.

There is a very agreeable book by Mrs. Crowe, entitled "The Night Side

of Nature," and which among a _dubia caena_ of authentic tales of terror,

contains several which go to show the very trivial causes which have

from time to time caused the reappearance of departed spirits in this

grosser world. A certain German professor, who, for instance, actually

_persecuted_ an old college friend with preternatural visitations for no

other purpose, as it turned out, than to procure a settlement of some

small six-and-eightpenny accounts, which he owed among his trades-people

at the time of his death. I could multiply, from my own notes, cases

still odder, in which sensible and rather indolent men, too, have been

at the trouble to re-cross the awful interval between us and the

invisible, for purposes apparently still less important--so trivial,

indeed, that for the present I had rather not mention them, lest I

should expose their memories to the ridicule of the unreflecting. I

shall now proceed to my narrative, with the repeated assurance, that the

reader will no where find in it a single syllable that is not most

accurately and positively true.

About four-and-thirty years ago I was traveling through Denbighshire

upon a mission which needed dispatch. I had, in fact, in my charge, some

papers which were required for the legal preliminaries to a marriage,

which was about to take place in a family of consideration, upon the

borders of that county.

The season was winter, but the weather delightful--that is to say, clear

and frosty; and, even without foliage, the country through which I

posted was beautiful. The subject of my journey was a pleasant one. I

anticipated an agreeable visit, and a cordial welcome; and the weather

and scenery were precisely of the sort to second the cheerful

associations with which my excursion had been undertaken. Let no one,

therefore, suggest that I was predisposed for the reception of gloomy or

horrible impressions. When the sun set we had a splendid moon, at once

soft and brilliant; and I pleased myself with watching the altered, and,

if possible, more beautiful effects of the scenery through which we were

smoothly rolling. I was to put up for the night at the little town of

----; and on reaching the hill--over which the approach to it is

conducted, about a short mile from its quaint little street--I

dismounted, and directing the postillion to walk his jaded horses

leisurely up the winding road, I trod on before him in the pleasant

moonlight, and sharp, bracing air. A little by-path led directly up the

steep acclivity, while the carriage-road more gradually ascended by a

wide sweep--this little path, leading through fields and hedgerows, I

followed, intending to anticipate the arrival of my conveyance at the

summit of the hill.

I had not proceeded very far when I found myself close to a pretty old

church, whose ivied tower, and countless diamond window panes, were

glittering in the moonbeams--a high, irregular hedge, overtopped by tall

and ancient trees inclosed it; and rows of funereal yews showed black

and mournful among the wan array of headstones that kept watch over the

village dead. I was so struck with the glimpse I had caught of the old

church-yard, that I could not forbear mounting the little stile that

commanded it--no scene could be imagined more still and solitary. Not a

human habitation was near--every sign and sound of life was reverently

remote; and this old church, with its silent congregation of the dead

marshaled under its walls, seemed to have spread round it a circle of

stillness and desertion that pleased, while it thrilled me.

No sound was here audible but the softened rush of waters, and that

sweet note of home and safety, the distant baying of the watch-dog, now

and then broken by the sharper rattle of the carriage-wheels upon the

dry road. But while I looked upon the sad and solemn scene before me,

these sounds were interrupted by one which startled, and, indeed, for a

moment, froze me with horror. The sound was a cry, or rather a howl of

despairing terror, such as I have never heard before or since uttered by

human voice. It broke from the stillness of the church-yard; but I saw

no figure from which it proceeded--though this circumstance, indeed, was

scarcely wonderful, as the broken ground, the trees, tall weeds, and

tomb-stones afforded abundant cover for any person who might have sought

concealment. This cry of unspeakable agony was succeeded by a silence;

and, I confess, my heart throbbed strangely, when the same voice

articulated, in the same tone of agony,

"Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I

will come to you in my flesh, though after my skin worms destroy this

body--and you shall speak to me, lace to face."

This strange address was followed by another cry of despair, which died

away as suddenly as it was raised.

I never could tell why it was I was not more horror-stricken than I

really was by this mysterious, and, all things considered, even terrible

interpellation. It was not until the silence had again returned, and the

faint rustling of the frosty breeze among the crisp weeds crept toward

me like the stealthy approach of some unearthly influence, that I felt a

superstitious terror gradually inspire me, which hurried me at an

accelerated pace from the place. A few minutes, and I heard the friendly

voice of my charioteer hallooing to me from the summit of the hill.

Reassured, as I approached him, I abated my speed.

"I saw you standing on the stile, sir, by the church-yard," he said, as

I drew near, "and I ask your pardon for not giving you the hint before,

but they say it is not lucky; and I called to you loud and lusty to come

away, sir; but I see you are nothing the worse of it."

"Why, what is there to be afraid of there, my good fellow?" I asked,

affecting as much indifference as I was able.

"Why, sir," said the man, throwing an uneasy look in the direction,

"they do say there's a bad spirit haunts it; and nobody in these parts

would go near it after dark for love or money."

"Haunted!" I repeated; "and how does the spirit show himself?" I asked.

"Oh! lawk, sir, in all sorts of shapes--sometimes like an old woman

almost doubled in two with years," he answered, "sometimes like a little

child agoing along a full foot high above the grass of the graves; and

sometimes like a big black ram, strutting on his hind legs, and with a

pair of eyes like live coals; and some have seen him in the shape of a

man, with his arm raised up toward the sky, and his head hanging down,

as if his neck was broke. I can't think of half the shapes he has took

at different times; but they're all bad: the very child, they say, when

he comes in that shape, has the face of Satan--God bless us! and

nobody's ever the same again that sees him once."

By this time I was again seated in my vehicle, and some six or eight

minutes' quick driving whirled us into the old-fashioned street, and

brought the chaise to a full stop before the open door and well-lighted

hall of the Bell Inn. To me there has always been an air of

indescribable cheer and comfort about a substantial country hostelrie,

especially when one arrives, as I did, upon a keen winter's night, with

an appetite as sharp, and something of that sense of adventure and

excitement which, before the days of down-trains and tickets, always in

a greater or less degree, gave a zest to traveling. Greeted with that

warmest of welcomes for which inns, alas! are celebrated, I had soon

satisfied the importunities of a keen appetite; and having for some

hours taken mine ease in a comfortable parlor before a blazing fire, I

began to feel sleepy, and betook myself to my no less comfortable

bed-chamber.

It is not to be supposed that the adventure of the church-yard had been

obliterated from my recollection by the suppressed bustle and good cheer

of the "Bell." On the contrary, it had occupied me almost incessantly

during my solitary ruminations; and as the night advanced, and the

stillness of repose and desertion stole over the old mansion, the

sensations with which this train of remembrance and speculation was

accompanied became any thing but purely pleasant.

I felt, I confess, fidgety and queer--I searched the corners and

recesses of the oddly-shaped and roomy old apartment--I turned the face

of the looking-glass to the wall--I poked the fire into a roaring

blaze--I looked behind the window-curtains, with a vague anxiety, to

assure myself that nothing could be lurking there. The shutter was a

little open, and the ivied tower of the little church, and the tufted

tops of the trees that surrounded it, were visible over the slope of the

intervening hill. I hastily shut out the unwelcome object, and in a mood

of mind, I must confess, favorable enough to any freak my nerves might

please to play me, I hurried through my dispositions for the night,

humming a gay air all the time, to re-assure myself, and plunged into

bed, extinguishing the candle, and--shall I acknowledge the weakness?

nearly burying my head under the blankets.

I lay awake some time, as men will do under such circumstances, but at

length fatigue overcame me, and I fell into a profound sleep. From this

repose I was, however, aroused in the manner I am about to describe. A

very considerable interval must have intervened. There was a cold air in

the room very unlike the comfortable atmosphere in which I had composed

myself to sleep. The fire, though much lower than when I had gone to

bed, was still emitting flame enough to throw a flickering light over

the chamber. My curtains were, however, closely drawn, and I could not

see beyond the narrow tent in which I lay.

There had been as I awaked a clanking among the fire-irons, as if a

palsied hand was striving to arrange the fire, and this rather

unaccountable noise continued for some seconds after I had become

completely awake.

Under the impression that I was subjected to an accidental intrusion, I

called out, first in a gentle and afterward in a sharper tone,

"Who's there?"

At the second summons the sound ceased, and I heard instead the tread of

naked feet, as it seemed to me, upon the floor, pacing to and fro,

between the hearth and the bed in which I lay. A superstitious terror,

which I could not combat, stole over me; with an effort I repeated my

question, and drawing myself upright in the bed, expected the answer

with a strange sort of trepidation. It came in terms and accompanied

with accessories which I shall not soon forget.

The very same tones which had so startled me in the church-yard the

evening before, the very sounds which I had heard then and there, were

now filling my ears, and spoken in the chamber where I lay.

"Why will you trouble the dead? Who can torment us before the time? I

will come to you in my flesh, 'though after my skin worms destroy this

body,' and you shall speak with me face to face."

As I live. I can swear the words and the voice were the very same I had

heard on the occasion I have mentioned, but (and mark this) repeated to

_no one_. With feelings which I shall not attempt to describe, I heard

the speaker approach the bed--a hand parted the bed-curtains and drew

them open, revealing a form more horrible than my fancy had ever

seen--an almost gigantic figure--naked, except for what might well have

been the rotten remnant of a shroud--stood close beside my bed--livid

and cadaverous--grimed as it seemed with the dust of the grave, and

staring on me with a gaze of despair, malignity, and fury, too intense

almost for human endurance.

I can not say whether I spoke or not, but this infernal spectre answered

me as if I had.

"I am dead and yet alive," it said, "the child of perdition--in the

grave I am a murderer, but here I am APOLLYON. Fall down and worship

me."

Having thus spoken, it stood for a moment at the bedside, and then

turned away with a shuddering moan, and I lost sight of it, but after a

few seconds it came again to the bedside as before.

"When I died they put me under Mervyn's tombstone, and they did not bury

me. My feet lie toward the _west_--turn them to the east and I will

rest--maybe I will rest--I will rest--rest--rest."

Again the figure was gone, and once again it returned, and said,

"I am your master--I am your resurrection and your life, and therefore,

fall down and worship me."

It made a motion to mount upon the bed, but what further passed I know

not, for I fainted.

I must have lain in this state for a long time, for when I became

conscious the fire was almost extinct. For hours that seemed

interminable I lay, scarcely daring to breathe, and afraid to get up

lest I should encounter the hideous apparition, for aught I knew,

lurking close beside me. I lay, therefore, in an agony of expectation

such as I will not attempt to describe, awaiting the appearance of the

daylight.

Gradually it came, and with it the cheerful and reassuring sounds of

life and occupation. At length I mustered courage to reach the

bell-rope, and having rung lustily, I plunged again into bed.

"Draw the window-curtains--open the shutters," I exclaimed as the man

entered, and, these orders executed, "look about the room," I added,

"and see whether a cat or any other animal has got in."

There was nothing of the sort; and satisfied that my visitant was no

longer in the chamber, I dismissed the man, and hurried through my

toilet with breathless precipitation.

Hastening from the hated scene of my terrors, I escaped to the parlor,

whither I instantly summoned the proprietor of "the Bell" in _propria

persona_. I suppose I looked scared and haggard enough, for mine host

looked upon me with an expression of surprise and inquiry.

"Shut the door," said I.

It was done.

"I have had an uneasy night in the room you assigned me, sir; I may say

indeed, a _miserable_ night," I said.

"Pray," resumed I, interrupting his apologetic expressions of surprise,

"has any person but myself ever complained of--of being _disturbed_ in

that room?"

"Never," he assured me.

I had suspected the ghastly old practical joke, so often played off by

landlords in story-books, and fancied I might have been deliberately

exposed to the chances of a "haunted chamber." But there was no acting

in the frank look and honest denial of mine host.

"It is a very strange thing," said I hesitating; and "I do not see why I

should not tell you what has occurred. And as I could swear, if

necessary, to the perfect reality of the entire scene, it behoves you, I

think, to sift the matter carefully. For myself, I can not entertain a

doubt as to the nature of the truly terrible visitation to which I have

been subjected; and, were I in your position, I should transfer my

establishment at once to some other house as well suited to the purpose,

and free from the dreadful liabilities of this."

I proceeded to detail the particulars of the occurence of the past

night, to which he listened with nearly as much horror as I recited them

with.

"Mervyn's tomb!" he repeated after me; "why that's down there in L----r:

the churchyard you can see from the window of the room you slept in."

"Let us go there instantly," I exclaimed, with an almost feverish

anxiety to ascertain whether we should discover in the place indicated

any thing corroborative of the authenticity of my vision.

"Well, I shan't say no," said he, obviously bracing himself for an

effort of courage; "but we'll take Faukes, and James the helper, with

us; and please, sir, you'll not mention the circumstance as has occurred

to either on 'em."

I gave him the assurance he asked for, and in a few minutes our little

party were in full march upon the point of interest.

There had been an intense black frost, and the ground, reverberating to

our tread with the hollow sound of a vault, emitted the only noise that

accompanied our rapid advance. I and my host were too much preoccupied

for conversation, and our attendants maintained a respectful silence. A

few minutes brought us to the low, gray walls and bleak hedgerows that

surrounded the pretty old church, and all its melancholy and picturesque

memorials.

"Mervyn's tomb lies there, I think, sir," he said, pointing to a corner

of the church-yard, in which piles of rubbish, withered weeds, and

brambles were thickly accumulated under the solemn, though imperfect

shelter of the wintry trees.

He exchanged some sentences with our attendants in Welsh.

"Yes, sir, that's the place," he added, turning to me.

And as we all approached it, I bethought me that the direction in which,

as I stood upon the stile, I had heard the voice on the night preceding,

corresponded accurately with that indicated by my guides. The tomb in

question was a huge slab of black marble, supported, as was made

apparent when the surrounding brambles were removed, upon six pillars,

little more than two feet high each. There was ample room for a human

body to lie inside this funeral penthouse; and, on stooping to look

beneath, I was unspeakably shocked to see that something like a human

figure was actually extended there.

It was, indeed, a corpse, and, what is more, corresponded in every trait

with the infernal phantom which, on the preceding night, had visited and

appalled me.

The body, though miserably emaciated, was that of a large-boned,

athletic man, of fully six feet four in height; and it was, therefore,

no easy task to withdraw it from the receptacle where it had been

deposited, and lay it, as our assistants did, upon the tombstone which

had covered it. Strange to say, moreover, the feet of the body, as we

found it, had been placed toward the west.

As I looked upon this corpse, and recognized, but too surely, in its

proportions and lineaments, every trait of the apparition that had stood

at my bed-side, with a countenance animated by the despair and malignity

of the damned, my heart fluttered and sank within me, and I recoiled

from the effigy of the demon with terror; second only to that which had

thrilled me on the night preceding.

* * * * *

Now, reader--_honest_ reader--I appeal to your own appreciation of

testimony, and ask you, having these facts in evidence, and upon the

deposition of an eye and ear witness, whose veracity, through a long

life, has never once been compromised or questioned, have you, or have

you not, in the foregoing story, a well-authenticated ghost story?

Before you answer the above question, however, it may be convenient to

let you know certain other facts which were clearly established upon

the inquest that was very properly held upon the body which in so

strange a manner we had discovered.

I purposely avoid details, and without assigning the depositions

respectively to the witnesses who made them, shall restrict myself to a

naked outline of the evidence as it appeared.

The body I have described was identified as that of Abraham Smith, an

unfortunate lunatic, who had, upon the day but one preceding, made his

escape from the neighboring parish workhouse, where he had been for many

years confined. His hallucination was a strange, but not by any means an

unprecedented one. He fancied that he had died, and was condemned; and,

as these ideas alternately predominated, sometimes spoke of himself as

an "evil spirit," and sometimes importuned his keepers to "bury him;"

using habitually certain phrases, which I had no difficulty in

recognizing as among those which he had addressed to me. He had been

traced to the neighborhood where his body was found, and had been seen

and relieved scarcely half a mile from it, about two hours before my

visit to the church-yard! There were, further, unmistakable evidences of

some person's having climbed up the trellis-work to my window on the

previous night, the shutter of which had been left unbarred, and, as the

window might have been easily opened with a push, the cold which I

experienced, as an accompaniment of the nocturnal visit, was easily

accounted for. There was a mark of blood upon the window-stool, and a

scrape upon the knee of the body corresponded with it. A multiplicity of

other slight circumstances, and the positive assertion of the

chamber-maid that the window had been opened, and was but imperfectly

closed again, came in support of the conclusion, which was to my mind

satisfactorily settled by the concurrent evidence of the medical men, to

the effect that the unhappy man could not have been many hours dead when

the body was found.

Taken in the mass, the evidence convinced me; and though I might still

have clung to the preternatural theory, which, in the opinion of some

persons, the facts of the case might still have sustained, I candidly

decided with the weight of evidence, "gave up the ghost," and accepted

the natural, but still somewhat horrible explanation of the occurrence.

For this candor I take credit to myself. I might have stopped short at

the discovery of the corpse, but I am no friend to "spurious gospels;"

let our faith, whatever it is, be founded in honest fact. For my part, I

steadfastly believe in ghosts, and have dozens of stories to support

that belief; but this is not among them. Should I ever come, therefore,

to tell you one, pray remember that you have to deal with a candid

narrator.

DEATH OF CROMWELL.

The flowers of autumn, withering fast.

Before the bitter Northern blast;

The earth with hoary frost o'erspread,

And Nature's leafy mantle shed,

Proclaimed abroad through earth and sky

That winter's gloomy reign drew nigh.

And he, whose hand, with mighty stroke,

Oppression's chains had often broke,

Whose patriot heart and fearless voice

Had made oppression's slaves rejoice,

Like autumn's beauty, day by day,

Was passing rapidly away.

Life's spring had brought him hopes and fears,

Its summer many toils and cares;

Autumn had brought him power and fame,

But autumn passed--life's winter came;

And then, like nature, seeking rest,

His head a dying pillow pressed.

A furious storm, with dreadful roar,

Shook Britain's isle from shore to shore,

The raging sea, with thundering sound,

Spread ruin, fear, and death around;

And seem'd to tell throughout the land

Some dire event was near at hand.

Surrounded by the howling blast,

His tide of life was ebbing fast;

But he was calm as evening air,

And raised on high a voice of prayer,

For neither storm nor death's fierce dart

Could shake the faith that nerv'd his heart.

He knew the hand that kept his life

Throughout a long, protracted strife,

Could never fail or know decay,

Though earth itself should pass away;

And as the stormy night rolled on,

His spirit hasted to be gone.

But morning dawn'd at length, and brought

That day's[C] return on which he fought

So often--till the evening sun

Set o'er the mighty victories won:

And darkness, like the warrior's shield,

Spread o'er the bloody battle-field.

That day brought victory no more;

His earthly triumphs then were o'er:

The battle of his life had pass'd,

And Death claim'd Victory at last;

For when the evening shades came down

His wearied spirit thence had flown.

WILLIAM ILOTT.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] 3d September, the anniversary of his greatest victories.

[From Household Words.]

MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

THE BEGINNING IS A BORE--I FALL INTO MISFORTUNE.

I am fond of gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the

garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or

invented, I like to dig a hole. On the third of March, 1848, I began a

hole behind the kitchen wall, whereinto it was originally intended to

transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a

strange humor impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task.

I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth's surface. A boy

who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I

confined my whole attention to spade labor. The centripetal force seemed

to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until autumn. In the

beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound given

by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labor, urged

as I was by a mysterious instinct downward. On applying my ear, I

occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a

theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In

November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a

considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach,

which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The

coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He

was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skillful way

in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had

seen no more than this, when the guard's horn blew, and presently we

pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four

bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.

"Dine here, sir?"

"Yes, certainly," said I. I like to dine--not the sole point of

resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.

"Trouble you for your stomach, sir."

While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled

face, my neighbor, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as

if to feel for money in his waistcoat-pocket. Directly afterward his

fingers come again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack.

Notwithstanding that is was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation

of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the oesophagus

attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him,

and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags

(which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers

within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round,

observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat

immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same

time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.

"Beg your pardon, sir, but you've been and done it."

"Done what?"

"Why, sir, you should have booked your place, and not come up in this

clandestine way. However, you've been and done it!"

"My good man, what have I done?"

"Why, sir, the Baron Terroro's eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly

suspect you've been and sat upon them."

I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon any thing

except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had

crushed and flattened.

"Only one," I said.

"Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape,

and it will know you again, that's certain. Well, it's no business of

mine. Of course you've no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare,

sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it's

ten-and-six."

"Is there room inside?" I inquired. It was advisable to shrink from

observation.

"Yes, sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There's room for

three, sir. Inside, one-pound-one."

I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

OF DIVISIONS WHICH OCCUR IN SKITZLAND--I AM TAKEN UP

Professor Essig's Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did

not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs,

loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they

were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion.

One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living

hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a

glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a

conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his

limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in

woolen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach, and

in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.

I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in

a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination?

The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently

himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.

"They are going to Skitzton, sir, to the hair dresser's."

"Yes, to be sure," I said. "They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might

have known."

"I beg your pardon, sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey.

But the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many

of the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive

it back by the return coach, properly cut and curled."

"Oh," said I. "Ah! Oh, indeed!"

"Dinners, gentlemen!" said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed

in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his

property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he

were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in

it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach

started.

I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw

Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be

met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me;

but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance

from an exposure.

"You are going to Court, sir, I presume?" said my Face and Hand friend,

after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting

mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.

"My dear sir," I replied, "let me be frank with you. I have arrived here

unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of

the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing.

For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful."

My friend smiled incredulity, and said,

"Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are

pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the

inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance

which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night

of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up

to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those

neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which

he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example,

devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to

use my senses, and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature

has deprived me of them."

"But," I observed, "it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take

yourselves to pieces."

"No one has that power, sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we

have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of

Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may

re-assemble."

"If they can fly," I asked, "why are they sent in coaches? There were a

pair of eyes on the box seat."

"Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be

seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore,

usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel."

"Do many accidents occur?"

"Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is

often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander, our laws,

as you, sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of

any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to

murder--"

After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again inquired whether

I was going up to Court?

"Why should I go to Court?"

"Oh, sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any

Skitzlander who has been left by nature in possession of every limb,

sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives

many state emoluments and dignities."

"Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?"

"Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now traveling to claim your

seat, the number will be raised to forty-three."

"The Baron Terroro--" I hinted.

"My brother, sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care.

Undoubtedly he is a member of the Upper House."

I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish

was fulfilled after the next pause. One eye, followed by six pairs of

arms, with strong hard hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I

was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me

out and away. The twelve hands wisked me through the air, while the one

eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

MY IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL FOR MURDER.

What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and,

as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with

very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe,

it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The

height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great,

that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should

have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is

quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the heaven of

white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I

was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was

by a detachment of members from the Skitzton police that I was now

hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common

observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our

planet. The theory of central fire, however, is, you perceive, quite

overturned by my experience.

We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its

streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at and much staring. The

street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig,

could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his

farewell lecture upon his return. "Gentlemen--Fuit Ilium, Fuit Ischium,

Fuit Sacrum, anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My

occupation's gone." Professor Owen's book "On the Nature of Limbs," must

contain, in the next edition, an Appendix "Upon Limbs in Skitzland." I

was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the

present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through

the streets to prison, and there duly chained, after having been

subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a

line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so

dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was

my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and

mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I

addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began,

therefore, immediately with a question:

"Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at

mid-day?"

An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.

"Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them."

"The teachers shall shine like stars in the firmament." I had a

propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so

practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.

"Believe me," I said, "I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself."

He answered with a hollow voice:

"Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there.

Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons."

Justice is prompt in Skitland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of

twelve men, who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain,

mouth, and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not

suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was

too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person,

deposed that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that

they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with

my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes

was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having

escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the

calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received

this information, he dispatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the

police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective

force to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my

crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton police then deposed that he sent

three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach.

That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been

unable to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had

taxed me with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the

murdered eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The

guard was brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called

upon for my defense. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trowsers, and

talking excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had

broken into some citizen's premises accidentally by falling from the

moon, his tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I

was severely reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The

judge summed up, and the jury found me guilty. The judge, who had put on

the black cap before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of

mercy, and straightway sentenced me to death, according to the laws and

usage of the realm.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

THE LAST HOURS OF THE CONDEMNED IN SKITZLAND--I AM EXECUTED.

The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a

criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to

increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered

to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most

luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for,

he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot like

rubbish off the fields of Skitzland.

Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.

Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was

taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with

hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with

ears only, in some. In a neighboring church, there was a popular

preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears,

and nothing more.

There was a day-performance at the Opera I went to that. Fine lungs and

mouths possessed the stage, and afterward there was a great bewilderment

with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most beautiful

ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls. My guides

sneered at my pretense of ignorance, when I asked why this was. But they

were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they informed me,

although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland, ladies who

possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at the age of

twenty-one all other endowments. So they become literally dolls, but

dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut their

eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and sometimes take a

pocket handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs are

powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the fashion

that excited my astonishment.

I said then, "Let me see the poor." They took me to a Workhouse. The

men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as

though it were composed of asphalte; it also had a smell like that of

pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.

A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of

real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having

dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me

what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained was

briefly this: that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach.

Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food,

joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the

whole clockwork of civilized life is kept in motion. Now, if a man

positively can not feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then

goes to the Workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement.

That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His

body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The

yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same

time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so

tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The

pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon

society, since he has not that stimulus to labor which excites industry

in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature

no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of

his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labors at the

workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the

first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach,

and for the one suit of apparel.

When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were

tolling. The superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away

time, for I had now no more than half an hour to live. Upon that I

leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part

in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the

subject of executions.

I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony

upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of

rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not

unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out

in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of

people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and

that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some

degree that portion of the sky toward which the artillery had been

directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of

earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown

upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going

more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I

dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the

market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a

revolution happens, the rebels are shot up--discharged from mortars by

means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our

gun-powder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverized by the friction in

grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears,

when we have once arrived at it.

The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned

the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it--Baron Terroro

by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly

left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered

to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of

my innate power, of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession

swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.

We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I

had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above

shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like

a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a

large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro)

exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the baron

ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head

in a noticeably vicious manner. The baron then cried "Fire!" and as I

shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.

CHAPTER THE FIFTH.

MY REVENGE ON THE SKITZLANDERS.

By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I

was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just

a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of

vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained

down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them

may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the

baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs,

and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.

It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back

while the dinner bell was ringing.

[From the People's Journal.]

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

Perhaps the event that lingers longest in the memory, among all the

appalling episodes and startling passages of the French Revolution, is

the assassination of the tyrant Marat, by Charlotte Corday. With the

blood of old Corneille running in her veins, and possessing something of

his stern and masculine love of liberty, this simple child of nature

hears in her distant home that her friends, the Girondists, are

proscribed, and that a hated triumvirate in Paris, tramples on the

feelings and liberties of the people. Full of one idea, she purchases a

knife, and, without a single confidant, sets out for the metropolis,

where, procuring an interview with Marat, she stabs him to the heart,

and with one blow accomplishes her revenge, and what she vainly supposed

to be the people's redemption.

In Miss Julia Kavanagh's charming volumes she gives us a pretty faithful

memoir of this extraordinary woman. Among the women of the French

Revolution, there is one, says the gifted authoress, who stands

essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. She appears

for a moment, performs a deed--heroic as to the intention, criminal as

to the means--and disappears forever; lost in the shadow of time--an

unfathomed mystery.

The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday--to give her the

name by which she is generally known--was spent in the calm obscurity of

her convent solitude. Many high visions, many burning dreams and lofty

aspirations, already haunted her imaginative and enthusiastic mind, as

she slowly paced the silent cloisters, or rested, lost in thought,

beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. It is said that, like Madame

Roland, she contemplated secluding herself for ever from the world in

her monastic retreat; but, affected by the skepticism of the age, which

penetrated even beyond convent walls, she gave up the project....

All the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor,

Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even

Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could

absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, with its stirring

deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon Philipon in the

recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Corday be seen in her

convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open volume of Plutarch, that

powerful and eloquent historian of all heroic sacrifices.

When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the Revolution,

Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and of

wonderful beauty; and never, perhaps, did a vision of more dazzling

loveliness step forth from beneath the dark convent portal into the

light of the free and open world. She was rather tall, but admirably

proportioned, with a figure full of native grace and dignity: her

hands, arms, and shoulders were models of pure sculptural beauty. An

expression of singular gentleness and serenity characterized her fair,

oval countenance and regular features. Her open forehead, dark and

well-arched eyebrows, and eyes of a gray so deep that it was often

mistaken for blue, added to her natural grave and meditative appearance;

her nose was straight and well formed, her mouth serious but exquisitely

beautiful.

On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte Corday

went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Bretteville Gouville,

an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-looking house in one of

the principal streets of Caen. There the young girl, who had inherited a

little property, spent several years, chiefly engaged in watching the

progress of the Revolution.

A silent reserve characterized this epoch of Charlotte Corday's life;

her enthusiasm was not external but inward; she listened to the

discussions which were carried on around her without taking a part in

them herself. She seemed to feel instinctively that great thoughts are

always better nursed in the heart's solitude: that they can only lose

their native depth and intensity by being revealed too freely before the

indifferent gaze of the world. Those with whom she then occasionally

conversed took little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could

remember nothing of it when she afterward became celebrated; but all

recollected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its

pure, silvery sound.

The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to

Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her

hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still silent

interest, the progress of events, concealing her secret indignation and

thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. Those feelings

were heightened in her soul by the presence of the fugitive Girondists,

who had found a refuge in Caen, and were urging the Normans to raise an

army to march on Paris. She found a pretense to call upon Barbaroux,

then with his friends at the Intendance. She came twice, accompanied by

an old servant, and protected by her own modest dignity. Pethion saw her

in the hall, where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and

observed with a smile, "So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see

republicans." "Citizen Pethion," she replied, "you now judge me without

knowing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." With

Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned Girondists; of

Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man had long haunted her with

a mingled feeling of dread and horror. To Marat she ascribed the

proscription of the Girondists, the woes of the Republic, and on him she

resolved to avenge her ill-fated country. Charlotte was not aware that

Marat was but the tool of Danton and Robespierre. "If such actions

could be counseled," afterward said Barbaroux, "it is not Marat whom we

would have advised her to strike."

While this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in Charlotte's

mind, she received several offers of marriage. She declined them, on the

plea of wishing to remain free: but strange indeed must have seemed to

her, at that moment, those proposals of earthly love. One of those whom

her beauty had enamored, M. de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the

cause of the Girondists, died of grief on learning her fate; his last

request was, that her portrait, and a few letters he had formerly

received from her, might be buried with him in his grave.

For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Charlotte

brooded silently over her great thought; often meditating on the history

of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on entering her room

one morning, she found an old Bible open on her bed: the verse in which

it is recorded that "the Lord had gifted Judith with a special beauty

and fairness," for the deliverance of Israel, was underlined with a

pencil.

On another occasion Madame de Bretteville found her niece weeping alone;

she inquired into the cause of her tears. "They flow," replied

Charlotte, "for the misfortunes of my country." Heroic and devoted as

she was, she then also wept, perchance, over her own youth and beauty,

so soon to be sacrificed forever. No personal considerations altered her

resolve: she procured a passport, provided herself with money, and paid

a farewell visit to her father, to inform him that, considering the

unsettled condition of France, she thought it best to retire to England.

He approved of her intention, and bade her adieu. On returning to Caen,

Charlotte told the same tale to Madame de Bretteville, left a secret

provision for an old nurse, and distributed the little property she

possessed among her friends.

It was on the morning of the 9th of July, 1793, that she left the house

of her aunt, without trusting herself with a last farewell. Her most

earnest wish was, when her deed should have been accomplished, to

perish, wholly unknown, by the hands of an infuriated multitude. The

woman who could contemplate such a fate, and calmly devote herself to

it, without one selfish thought of future renown, had indeed the heroic

soul of a martyr.

Her journey to Paris was marked by no other event than the unwelcome

attentions of some Jacobins with whom she traveled. One of them, struck

by her modest and gentle beauty, made her a very serious proposal of

marriage: she playfully evaded his request, but promised that he should

learn who and what she was at some future period. On entering Paris, she

proceeded immediately to the Hotel de la Providence, Rue ties Vieux

Augustins, not far from Marat's dwelling. Here she rested for two days

before calling on her intended victim. Nothing can mark more forcibly

the singular calmness of her mind: she felt no hurry to accomplish the

deed for which she had journeyed so far, and over which she had

meditated so deeply: her soul remained serene and undaunted to the last.

The room which she occupied, and which has often been pointed out to

inquiring strangers, was a dark and wretched attic, into which light

scarcely ever penetrated. There she read again the volume of Plutarch

she had brought with her--unwilling to part from her favorite author,

even in her last hours--and probably composed that energetic address to

the people which was found upon her after her apprehension.

Charlotte perceived that to call on Marat was the only means by which

she might accomplish her purpose. She did so on the morning of the 13th

of July, having first purchased a knife in the Palais Royal, and written

him a note, in which she requested an interview. She was refused

admittance. She then wrote him a second note, more pressing than the

first, and in which she represented herself as persecuted for the cause

of freedom. Without waiting to see what effect this note might produce,

she called again at half-past seven the same evening.

Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking house,

which has since been demolished. His constant fears of assassination

were shared by those around him; the porter seeing a strange woman pass

by his lodge, without pausing to make any inquiry, ran out and called

her back. She did not heed his remonstrance, but swiftly ascended the

old stone staircase, until she had reached the door of Marat's

apartment. It was cautiously opened by Albertine, a woman with whom

Marat cohabited, and who passed for his wife. Recognizing the same young

and handsome girl who had already called on her husband, and animated,

perhaps by a feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit

her; Charlotte insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their

altercation reached Marat: he immediately ordered his wife to admit the

stranger, whom he recognized as the author of the two letters he had

received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly; she

allowed Charlotte to enter; and after crossing with her an ante chamber,

where she had been occupied with a man named Laurent Basse in folding

some numbers of the "Ami du Peuple," she ushered her through two other

rooms, until they came to a narrow closet where Marat was then in a

bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, and ordered his wife to leave them

alone: she complied, but allowed the door of the closet to remain half

open, and kept within call.

According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief bound

round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse covering

was thrown across the bath; a board, likewise, placed transversely,

supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked Charlotte the

purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that she touched the bath

near which she stood. She gazed on him with ill-disguised horror and

disgust, but answered as composedly as she could, that she had come from

Caen, in order to give him correct intelligence concerning the

proceedings of the Girondists there. He listened, questioned her

eagerly, wrote down the names of the Girondists, then added, with a

smile of triumph: "Before a week they shall have perished on the

guillotine." "These words," afterward said Charlotte, "sealed his fate."

Drawing from beneath the handkerchief which covered her bosom the knife

she had kept there all along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's

heart. He gave one loud, expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in

the bath. By an instinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out

the knife from the breast of her victim, but she did not strike again;

casting it down at his feet, she left the closet, and sat down in the

neighboring room, thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow: her

task was done.

The wife of Marat had rushed to his aid on hearing his cry for help.

Laurent Basse, seeing that all was over, turned round toward Charlotte,

and, with a blow of a chair, felled her to the floor; while the

infuriated Albertine trampled her under her feet. The tumult aroused the

other tenants of the house; the alarm spread, and a crowd gathered in

the apartment, who learned with stupor that Marat, the Friend of the

People, had been murdered. Deeper still was their wonder when they gazed

on the murderess. She stood there before them with still disordered

garments, and her disheveled hair, loosely bound by a broad green ribbon

falling around her; but so calm, so serenely lovely, that those who most

abhorred her crime gazed on her with involuntary admiration. "Was she

then so beautiful?" was the question addressed, many years afterward, to

an old man, one of the few remaining witnesses of this scene.

"Beautiful!" he echoed, enthusiastically; adding, with the eternal

regrets of old age: "Ay, there are none such now!"

On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She was

dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her bearing was so

imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the judges seemed to

stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the first witness, by

declaring that it was she who had killed Marat. "Who inspired you with

so much hatred against him?" asked the President.

"I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own," she

energetically replied; "besides, we do not execute well that which we

have not ourselves conceived."

"What, then, did you hate in Marat?"

"His crimes."

"Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?"

"No; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear."

She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. Her

project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. "She had

killed one man to save a hundred thousand She was a republican long

before the Revolution, and had never failed in energy."

"What do you understand by energy?" asked the President.

"That feeling," she replied, "which induces us to east aside selfish

considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country."

Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she had

given, that she must be well practiced in crime. "The monster takes me

for an assassin!" she exclaimed, in a tone thrilling with indignation.

This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It was not Doulcet de

Pontecoulant--who had not received her letter--but Chauveau de la Garde,

chosen by the President. Charlotte gave him an anxious look, as though

she feared he might seek to save her at the expense of honor. He spoke,

and she perceived that her apprehensions were unfounded. Without

excusing her crime, or attributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the

fervor of her conviction; which he had the courage to call sublime. The

appeal proved unavailing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without

deigning to answer the President, who asked her if she had aught to

object to the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose,

and walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully. "These

gentlemen," said she, pointing to the judges, "have just informed me

that the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the

prison: as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay

this little debt."

On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named Hauer,

waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at the

tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner,

carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors with

which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance. "What, so soon!"

exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but rallying her

courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a look of her hair to

M. Hauer, as the only reward in her power to offer. A priest came to

offer her his ministry. She thanked him and the persons by whom he had

been sent, but declined his spiritual aid. The executioner cut her hair,

bound her hands, and threw the red chemise over her. M. Hauer was struck

with the almost unearthly loveliness which the crimson hue of this

garment imparted to the ill-fated maiden. "This toilet of death, though

performed by rude hands, leads to immortality," said Charlotte, with a

smile.

A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the

conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd lined

every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hootings and

execrations at first rose on her path; but as her pure and serene beauty

dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of her countenance

and the sculptural beauty of her figure became more fully revealed,

pity and admiration superseded every other feeling. Her bearing was so

admirably calm and dignified, as to rouse sympathy in the breasts of

those who detested not only her crime, but the cause for which it had

been committed. Many men of every party took off their hats and bowed as

the cart passed before them. Among those who waited its approach, was a

young German, normed Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue

Saint Honore, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed on the

lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his imaginative

race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of the human heart, took

possession of his soul.

Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte now stood

near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding it, but soon

resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face when the

executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her neck and

shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. The executioner

touched a spring and the ax came down. One of Samson's assistants

immediately stepped forward, and holding up the lifeless head to the

gaze of the crowd, struck it on either cheek. The brutal act only

excited a feeling of horror; and it is said that--as though even in

death her indignant spirit protested against this outrage--an angry and

crimson flush passed over the features of Charlotte Corday.

[From Household Words.]

GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.

In England every body notices the weather, and talks about the weather,

and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us _know_ any thing about

it. The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an

insatiable national disease--consumption; the density of our winter fog

has gained an European celebrity; while the general haziness of our

atmosphere induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are

ever indulged with a real blue sky. "Good day" has become the national

salutation; umbrellas, water-proof clothes, and cough mixtures are

almost necessities of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly

proofs of the importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is

only within the last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken

in England to watch the weather and the proximate elements which

regulate its course and variations.

Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope

established that a continuance of patient inquiry will be rewarded by

still further discoveries. To take a single result, it may be mentioned,

that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the

temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally

kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the

loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to

increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period

after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as

certainly as a well-aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate, or

deficient food and shelter, has prepared them for the final stroke, but

they actually die at last of the weather.

Before 1838, several European states, less apt than ourselves to talk

about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various

contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year

England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the

Admiralty under the title of the "Board of Visitors," to see what is in

progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the

astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of

magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials "listened and

believed."

The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory

walls, in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterward a few

low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the inclosure.

These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet

they contain some most beautifully-constructed instruments, and have

been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the

greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich

Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling, sees only a

series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some eighty feet

high, steadied by ropes, and having a lantern at the top, and a windlass

below; and if he looks closer, he perceives a small inner inclosure,

surrounded by a dwarf fence; an upright stand, with a movable top,

sheltering a collection of thermometers; and here and there a pile of

planks and unused partitioning, that helps to give the place an

appearance of temporary expediency, an aspect something between a

collection of emigrants' cottages and the yard of a dealer in

second-hand building materials. But--as was said when speaking of the

Astronomical Observatory--Greenwich is a practical place, and not one

prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a

dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses, during the last ten

years, Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the

zeal and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And

the results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers,

are curious in the extreme; but before we ask what they are, let us

cross the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.

The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front

to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood, all iron and other metals

being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large

magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to

interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these

magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the

fourth arm is a sort of double window, filled with apparatus for

receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands

close by. Thus, in this wooden shed, we find one portion devoted to;

electricity--to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the

atmosphere--and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the

influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the

conditions of the air. "True as the needle to the pole," is the burden

of an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about

this same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it

deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the

magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they

will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin's sea-heroes, whose

constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to

the north.

Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention

are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is

collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the

mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its

progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the

pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts

off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which

supports it. Another light, for the purpose of collecting the

electricity by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This

light, burning at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in

the neighborhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lantern to

those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are

closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. "Then, surely," says

another popular legend, "it is to guide the ships on the river, when on

their way up at night; a sort of landmark to tell where-abouts the

Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show

where their watchers are."

All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is

shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no

trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a

chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall

leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will

have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure

its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It

is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our

right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by

tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two

straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater

force, while neighboring instruments measure the length of the electric

sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk, close by,

sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications. In his

book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much

electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to

such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple

in color. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is

not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.

Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large

size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such

bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk

were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their

position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in

their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair's breadth. One magnet

hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a

scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully,

that when once adjusted and inclosed in its case, it is opened only once

a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its

truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the

astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the

instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in

spinning their fine threads among his machines. Indeed, spiders

occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behavior At

times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian

fire-worshiper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that, but

always gazing through the sun's rays up toward that luminary. He seems

demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he snatches

apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down In truth his eye had at last

caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible spider line

running from the electrical wire to the neighboring planks. The spider

who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such daring

with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and that

beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a portion

of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested, and

registered by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding

delicacy of the observations.

For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly

watched every two hours--every even hour--day and night, except on

Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws

regulating the movements of the mariner's compass; hence, that while men

became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief

observer--the _genius loci_--is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the

reports of the Register-General. He, with two assistants, from year to

year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the

magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon

pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with

the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the

three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with

almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of

figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit

upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual

watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing

the tasks before performed by human labor; and doing them more

faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around

the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light

from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a

single ray of prepared light, which, falling upon a mirror soldered to

the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed toward

a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet's slightest

motion! The paper moves on by clock-work, and once in four-and-twenty

hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a

lantern of _yellow glass_, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on

which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and

then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it

securely in, winds up the clock-work, puts out his yellow light, and

lets in the sunshine. His lantern glass is yellow, because the yellow

rays are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the

photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish

in which its magnetic picture is to be _fixed_ by a further chemical

process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic

likeness--as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands

of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the

art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.

Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the

magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr.

Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches

of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers

have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same

ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.

The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the southwest contains a

modification of Mr. Brooke's ingenious plan, by which the rise and fall

of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the building

are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather. Their

shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls, it

moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the ray

of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we see

the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold both

recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden sheds, as

completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same thing, on

the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to the

inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been recently

revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus: "To Mr. Charles Brooke for his

invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the apparatus

for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological phenomena,

L500." Every year the invention will save fully L500 worth of human

toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year millions voted

for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless purposes.

Photography, however, can not do all the work. Its records have to be

cheeked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be

brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which

test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain

scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the

practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses

his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and

barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general

value, but now, by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published

by the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values,

and be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly

seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House,

but they were a dead letter--mere long columns of figures--till these

tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one

scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers,

who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and

deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities,

which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.

What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these

Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have

afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are

written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal

to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already the

results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number

of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life

induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed.

Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a

warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of

the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons

together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather

seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods

of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the

seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point,

and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach

the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the

last seventy-nine years--from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the

coldest, were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality,

popular discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm

years are tinted brown, and the cold years gray, and as the sheets are

turned over and the dates scanned, the fact suggest itself that a gray

period saw Lord George Gordon's riots; a gray period was marked by the

Reform Bill excitement; and a gray period saw the Corn Laws repealed.

A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers,

and we have done.

Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average

temperature--not too hot nor too cold.

The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and,

consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the

improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.

The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the

air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as

lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the

utmost consequence.

Some day near the 20th of January--the lucky guess, in 1838, of Murphy's

Weather Almanac--will, upon the average of years, be found to be the

coldest of the whole year.

In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as

to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and

various authors have tried to account for it--at present in vain. The

favorite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold

to the loosening of the icebergs of the north. Another weather

eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of

November.

Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the

temperature of the Thames, and of the surrounding atmosphere, are

expected to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night

the Thames is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day

time from eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.

If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons

colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin

again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with,

and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the

Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.