the balance of power, invented an enchanting drink, and called it by that identical name, that Moral Suasion might be upon their side also. It is therefore well worthy of our attention, if only from its historical value. Mint Julep, on the other hand, has almost a celestial birth. The divine Milton has even given us, in his Comus, the recipe for concocting that delicious compound, which it seems he preferred before all others, for "first," says he,

"Behold this cordial julep here,

That flames and dances in his crystal bounds, With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed."' 'My dearest Jones,' said I, 'you are the Enchanter himself; and I fear I am not so virtuous as the Lady. Lead on, then, with all my heart, to the American Bar.'

The Transatlantic gentleman who presided over this famous Institution was affable and attentive in the highest degree. We placed ourselves, at his own suggestion, entirely in his hands, and agreed to take whatever compound the nature of our condition (or complaint, as he humorously termed it) seemed to him to demand. He prepared a Stone Fence (price one shilling) in the first instance, but observing afterwards that we were tighter than he had thought we were’an Americanism which I did not understand-he substituted for that a Corpse Reviver. As I watched the liquid fly from one crystal vessel to another in his nimble hands, I perceived that milk was an ingredient, and my heart sank within me. He promised, however, that a tumbler of this would make another man of each of us, and, in a certain limited sense, he was right. The immediate effect of the Corpse Reviver was to fill us with an extraordinary courage and determination. Our self-esteem rose fifty per cent., and with it our indignation at the conduct of the Brownes of Piccadilly.

'It would only serve them right,' observed Jones defiantly, since they have asked us so often "to come in the evening," when we had rather have stopped at home, if we were to pay them a visit for once when they didn't want us. Suppose, now, we go to the Brownes to-night, after all. They said they were hoping to have the honour of our company: let them have it then. What say you, my Smith?'

I applauded this heroic resolution, although not without some little misgiving. Our boots were already muddy, so that there was no use in taking a cab; and besides, we felt that motion and fresh air were absolutely essential to the favourable development of the effects of the Transatlantic elixir. It had not so much revived as galvanised us. If we once gave way to the 'coma' which we felt impending, we had a presentiment that it would be all over with us. What we required was excitement; lights, music, jewels, fashionable conversation, and furniture of Louis Quatorze-the reception-room of the Brownes in Piccadilly was, in fact, the very place for us.

'We are not in evening-dress, my friend,' observed Jones, stopping suddenly, and laying his hand affectionately upon a lamp-post. I took no notice of this little mistake of identity, but replied from the other side of him, as though he had appealed to myself, as had been his intention. That is very true, my Jones, but what does it matter? They ask for the pleasure of our company, not for that of our polished leather boots. Let us say that we knew what really hospitable people they were, and how glad they would be to see us drop in, in a family way. Browne will like that, I am sure.'

The great house loomed rather awfully upon us as we approached its portals, and a little hesitation came over me which caused me to ring the area-bell instead of that devoted to visitors. Jones, however, applied himself to the other with a compensatory vehemence which brought the footman to the front-door upon the instant.

'Mrs Browne at home?' inquired I, giving him my hat, but not making any effort to take off my greatcoat, because I saw that Jones was failing in that endeavour signally.

There is a party to-night, gentlemen,' observed the footman, regarding our personal appearance with some misgiving.

'Yes,' said I, 'a dinner-party and an evening-party; we belong to the evening-party, we do; ha, ha!'

It was a curious and striking illustration of the proverbial insolence of the pampered menials of Fashion that this footman, assisted by other retainers, did absolutely and by force prevent my Jones from going up stairs. They said that it was impossible that he could do such a thing with his greatcoat on, nor would they permit him to prove that the thing was really practicable by doing it. I sat on one of the hall chairs, and watched the fracas without much interest; lack of interest in all sublunary (or indeed in any) matters, being, as I found, the chief feature of the Corpse Reviver after the first twenty minutes. I only drummed with my heels upon the hall floor (which being of polished oak, was fortunately reverberatory), and shouted at the top of my voice for Tompkins. My conciliatory and peaceful conduct shone out, I flatter myself, by contrast with that of my companion. If Tompkins would come, said I, all would be forgotten and forgiven, but otherwise they must take the consequences. The commotion connected with Jones at last communicated itself throughout the palatial residence; the cry for Tompkins penetrated into the four reception-rooms. Old Browne himself came down in an awful state of excitement, but I did not pay the slightest attention to him. I wanted my Tompkins, and at last my Tompkins came. Then I reproached him with his conduct in coming to dinner that day, and leaving his old friends come in the evening,' till I think he looked rather ashamed of himself.

to

As for Browne of Piccadilly, my last memorable words to him were these: 'Now, don't you go asking my friend Jones again, nor me, to come to any of these after-dinner parties of yours, for we don't like 'em; so, let this be a warning to you.'

And I suppose that it was a warning to him, for the Brownes of Piccadilly have never asked either of us to come in the evening' from that day to this. Verbum sap.

LAMP-ACCIDENTS.

WHAT possesses our middle-class housewives, or their husbands and sons, that they cannot trim and fill their lamps by daylight? The hospital lists of accidents, and the registers of coroners' inquests, are shewing a constant increase of injuries and deaths from lampaccidents, and yet every fresh one happens exactly like all that have gone before. Somebody is holding a candle for somebody else to replenish the lamp, when the lamp or the can explodes,' and everybody is astonished because the light was not within so many inches of the oil! There are few of us who have not known such a case within the circle of our own acquaintance, and in each instance we are amazed at the rashness of the sufferer, or of some member of the household in which he met his fate. The frequency of these accidents now threatens us with bad consequences, which must be intercepted, if possible. When we find a coroner's jury recommending that parliament should forbid the household use of dangerous oils, it is time to point out that it is not the business of parliament to save us from the consequences of our own stupid folly. It would be no more absurd to call for a law against the muslin sleeves of ladies, or the use of lucifer-matches by housemaids, than to propose any meddling by the Legislature with our parlour and kitchen lamps, when it is in our own power to render them safer than the old-fashioned candles ever were.

Where the plainest and easiest caution is used, there is less danger to the person from household lights than there ever was before; and the burned corpses on which inquests have been held so often within the last five years, are almost all victims of a folly which we should have no mercy upon if it had related to any old instead of a new domestic custom. When we began, many years ago, to use oil-lamps instead of the mould-candles of our fathers, there was occasionally the nuisance of a bad smell, occurring in the most agreeable part of the evening's recreation. Servants were careless, or were supposed to be so; and not only their mistresses, but their masters, declared that lamps were not to be trusted to any hands but their own. Lawyers, medical men, merchants, and shopkeepers by hundreds, made a point of trimming and filling the study or drawing-room lamp for themselves. They meant to do it before going to business in the morning; but it was often forgotten, and then it had to be done when the master came home to dinner at six or seven. When the Moderator and other lamps gave place to camphine, naphtha, and paraffine lights, the same practice went on; and several times in a year we have heard or read of the incomprehensible way in which a sheet of flame wrapped round the unfortunate holder of the candle or the can, or both. If the lamp burns dim in the middle of the evening, the only idea is of replenishing it at the same risk; we have heard of law or medical students preparing in this way for night-study; and not a few young men have been cut short in their career by an accident as foolhardy as that of the miner who opens his Davy-lamp to light his pipe, or to brighten the flame in a coal-pit. In America, the deaths from this cause, and from carrying about small camphine lamps, easily dropped or upset, have been more numerous than with us, so that we have seen newspapers which have waged war for years together against the whole order of camphine and naphtha lamps; yet it would be difficult to point to any cases in which the mischief did not arise from the most avoidable risks.

The

The risk is daily on the increase, now that the oilwells of Pennsylvania and Canada are in full action, offering to all the world a light so cheap, so clean, so bright, that society will certainly choose to avail itself of the new resource to the utmost extent. Already, there are towns and villages in England where candles are rarely seen, and are likely to be forgotten. No candles that are within the reach of the working-man's purse can compare, for effectiveness and cheapness, with the photogene lamp which may be seen suspended in the back-parlour of the shop, in the kitchen, and in the cottage. It is no small comfort to be rid of the droppings of grease, and the dirty and stinking snuff of the dip-candle. days of the guttering and flaring candle are over, and instead of it, there is the steady, bright, scentless, cleanly, and pretty lamp, suspended over the table, hurting nobody's eyes, and lighting every corner of the room. If the druggists' assurance is true, that photogene does not 'explode,' there is no objection to its use for hand-lamps; and all risks from sparks, from hanging linen, and from any contact of the light with bed-curtains or clothes, are avoided. The cheapness is already remarkable, and the price must still decrease as access to the American oil-wells is improved, and the competition of our English small-coal with those wells becomes closer. Already we hear of the vanishing bulk of the mountains of small-coal about the mouths of our pits as the demand for photogene increases. Already, we are paying only 38. 4d. per gallon for photogene, while camphine sells for 7s. 6d. -the gallon of the cheaper fluid going much further than that of the dearer; so that in the shortest days of winter, when we burn camphine to the amount of 5d. per evening, the photogene light costs only 1d. Under such circumstances, it is absurd for juries to

propose a parliamentary prohibition of the use of inflammable oils. Opinion should be directed, not against the commodity, but against the reckless folly of bringing it into contact with flame. It is very well that the subject should be stirred; it is very well that the Americans should be bending their efforts towards purifying and refining their inexhaustible oil, and making roads from the wells to the railway stations; it is very well that the sellers in England should be settling the names and descriptions of their inflammable oils, and arranging their methods and terms of proof of the commodity, before it is sold: but it would be of greater use than any other procedure if people were henceforth to protect themselves and their families and servants by taking care that no receptacle of these oils was ever opened after dark. The can and the barrel should be alike placed under lock and key, if no less stringent prohibition would avail. What can be simpler, or more easy? Yet, by this one precaution, a whole order of fatal accidents would be precluded. In the Bankruptcy Court, the other day, a bankrupt's stock was spoken of as reserved from present sale because it consisted of paraffine lamps; being paraffine lamps at a discount, on account of recent accidents.' All those accidents having been caused by the same act of carelessness, a stronger satire against our household good sense could not have been uttered. To send us back to the peril of candleburning, would cap the absurdity; rather let us perceive and shew that one of the uses of daylight is to prepare our lights for the dark hours.

AN

APRIL MORNING.

Ir is a joyous morning;

The western gale blows free, And rolls the light clouds eastward Like billows of the sea.

Oft bursts the silver sunshine

On woodland, vale, and hill, But neither shade nor sunshine Stands for a moment still; For now the hills are silvered,

The valleys dark with shade; Then rush the shadows upward, And light is in the glade. Their dry and leafless branches,

The trees about them fling-
They seem to feel within them

The beating pulse of Spring.
The black rooks, cawing ever,
Are wheeling in the skies;
The blackbird to the throstle
In merry note replies.
Among the woods, the squirrel
Leaps glad from tree to tree;
And all the gushing waters

Sing songs of liberty.
There is a sense of gladness,

A thrill of joy and mirth
That runs throughout all nature,
Through water, sky, and earth.
Then forth into the sunshine,
Ye sons of toil and care,
And
ye shall own that Nature
Is mighty to repair!

C.

all communications be addressed to 47 Paternoster Row, The Editors of Chambers's Journal have to request that London, and that they further be accompanied by postagestamps, as the return of rejected Contributions cannot otherwise be guaranteed.

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers.

OBELISKS.

Of all architectural memorials, the obelisk is at once 'the most ancient and the most durable. Peculiar, like the more mysterious pyramids, to the land of the Pharaohs, they bear everlasting testimony to the skill of the great people to whom Greece was indebted for her art and her philosophy.

All the larger Egyptian obelisks that have escaped destruction at the hands of man-for to the assaults of Time these colossal erections seem to bid defiance-are monoliths of red Syene granite; so proportioned that the shaft is nine or ten times as high as the base of the obelisk is thick, while the diameter at the top is never less than one-half, or more than three-fourths, of the diameter at the base. As a rule, the sides of the Egyptian obelisks are not of equal dimensions, an irregularity probably arising from the fact of their seldom being erected as isolated objects, but usually placed in pairs at the entrances of temples, to break the long line of pyramidal towers, and mark the direction of the avenue of sphinxes. They were generally inscribed with the name of the monarch reigning at the time of their erection, and that of the deity to whom the temple was consecrated.

The credit of originating this noble class of memorials is given to Sesostris the Great, who, some 1600 years before the commencement of the Christian era, erected a pair of obelisks one hundred and twenty cubits high, for the purpose of recording his conquests and the wealth and resources of his immense empire. His successors followed the example, till Egypt became famous for its 'Pharaoh's Needles,' as they were termed by the Arabs. Of the numberless obelisks raised from time to time, only ten of any size are said to remain, to excite the awe and wonderment of the degenerate dwellers in the nursery of civilisation. Among the ruins of the hundred-pillared temple of Karnak stands a beautiful red granite obelisk, upwards of seventy feet high, and near it lie the fragments of its companion. In another part of the temple is a still grander one, erected in memory of an Egyptian queen thirty-three centuries ago: the entire height of this splendid monument is ninety-two feet. An inscription upon it records that nineteen months elapsed between the commencement of the work in the quarry to its erection where it stands. An obelisk before the temple of Isis, at Philæ, is notable for having inscribed on its pedestal a petition

PRICE 14d.

from the priests of Isis to King Ptolemy and his two Cleopatras, complaining of public functionaries and great persons visiting the island, and quartering themselves on the priesthood, to their great expense and inconvenience. To this petition is appended Ptolemy's reply, and his royal command that the priests of Isis be no more troubled by their unwelcome guests.

A small obelisk, about forty-three feet high, lying broken near Biggig, and supposed to have been erected during Joseph's sojourn in Egypt, is remarkable for having the apex round instead of pointed. Its fragments are objects of reverence with the people of the country, the women reciting their prayers over the fallen ancient, hoping thereby to be blessed with a numerous family. At Heliopolis, the once famous City of the Sun, an obelisk rears itself sixty-two feet above the ground. This stands upon two pedestals; the uppermost of which, two feet high, projects about the same distance on every side beyond the base of the obelisk, and is itself supported by a larger pedestal nineteen feet square. At Alexandria, near the site of the palace of Shakspeare's 'serpent of Old Nile,' are the two obelisks known as Cleopatra's Needles, one of which might long since have beautified our capital with its presence. During the occupation of Egypt by the British army, an attempt was made to raise it for conveyance to England; that attempt failed, and the obelisk was left to be covered by the sands of Alexandria. It now lies disinterred again; and according to the latest account, is very much mutilated, large portions, especially from the upper angles, being broken away, the hieroglyphics on the faces exposed to the land-winds almost entirely defaced, and the shaft itself severed eighteen inches from the top. As it is, it measures fifty-nine feet to the base of the pyramid with which it terminates; the width at the base is seven and a half feet, and the diameter at the top nearly five feet. Like its companion, this obelisk is not perfectly square, there being a variation of as much as six inches in the dimensions of the sides. Thirty-one years ago, Luxor boasted two magnificent obelisks, covered with inscriptions, cut in some instances to a depth of two inches, and remarkable for a slight convexity of their centres, supposed by Sir Gardner Wilkinson to have been introduced to obviate the effect of the shadows thrown by the sun. The pair were given to France, and the smaller and more westerly of the two now ornaments Paris. This obelisk measures seventy-six feet

in height, and eight at the base, and is calculated to weigh about 352,276 pounds. Its removal was commenced in 1831, under the direction of M. Lebas, when it was discovered to have been cracked previous to erection, and afterwards secured by wooden cramps. For three months, eight hundred labourers were employed constructing an inclined plane from the obelisk to the river, where the vessel lay for its conveyance. Encased in planks, the monolith was drawn down the incline, shipped, and safely deposited, in 1833, near the Pont de la Concorde. Here it remained for more than two years, which were occupied in constructing a pedestal sixteen feet high for its erection in the Place. When this was completed, an inclined plane was made from the water to a stone platform level with the pedestal, over which the obelisk, on a kind of timber-sledge, was dragged by means of ropes and capstans. As soon as the edge of its base touched that of the pedestal, the monolith was raised perpendicularly by ropes and pulleys attached to ten masts; and within three hours, the operation was brought to a successful conclusion; some thirty thousand pounds having been expended from first to last.

Rome, thanks to the Cæsars, is rich in the spoils of Egyptian art. To Augustus it is indebted for the obelisk fronting the Madonna del Popolo, which, according to Pliny, was quarried by the order of King Semenpserteus, during whose reign Pythagoras visited Egypt, an event fixed by chronologists at 535 B. C. Another of still older date, attributed to Sesostris, was erected by the same emperor in the Campus Martius. This, Pliny tells us, was applied to a singular purpose that of marking the shadows projected by the sun, and so measuring the length of the day and night. With this object, a stone pavement was laid, the extreme length of which corresponded exactly with the length of the shadow thrown by the obelisk at the sixth hour (noon) on the day of the winter solstice; after this period, the shadow would go on, day by day, gradually decreasing, and then again would as gradually increase, correspondingly with certain lines of brass that were inserted in the stone. For the last thirty years, however, the observations derived from this dial have been found not to agree. Whether it is that the sun itself has changed its course, in consequence of some derangement of the heavenly system; or whether the whole earth has been in some degree displaced from its centre; or whether some earthquake, confined to this city only, has wrenched the dial from its original position; or whether it is that, in consequence of the inundations of the Tiber, the foundations of the mass have subsided, in spite of the assertion that they are sunk as deep into the earth as the obelisk erected upon them is high.' This false gnomon was in time overthrown altogether, and lay hidden until 1748, when it was dug up, and found to be broken in two. In 1792, Pius VI. had it re-erected in the Piazza di Monte Ciborio. Its total height is one hundred and ten feet; that of the shaft alone, seventy-three and a half feet. Pheron, the successor of Sesostris, after being afflicted with blindness for ten years, recovered his sight by means of an extraordinary remedy prescribed by an oracle he had consulted, and to commemorate the event, erected two tall obelisks. One of these Caligula had transported to Rome, in the most wonderful vessel ever beheld on the ancient seas, the mast of which required four men to span its girth. The obelisk was broken in its carriage, and thereby lost something in height. Pope Sixtus V., with whom this monolith was a special favourite, lost no time after his accession to the pontifical chair in having it removed from the Vatican Circus to the piazza of St Peter's. How to effect the removal of the mass of stone, estimated to weigh 993,537 pounds, and measuring altogether one hundred and thirty-two feet, was a difficult problem, although the pontiff received

no less than five hundred plans for its solution. The task was confided to Fontana, who kept six hundred men, one hundred and forty horses, and fortysix cranes, employed for twelve months in executing it, at a cost of nine thousand pounds. When the time came for raising the obelisk on its new site, Sixtus forbade any one to speak during the operation under pain of death. One of the Brescas of St Remo, who was looking on, saw that the ropes would soon break from friction, and bravely shouted out for water. Sixtus asked him to name his own reward, and Bresca elected to have the privilege of supplying the papal chapel with palms on Palm Sunday, a privilege still claimed by his descendants. There was a gilt ball on the top of this obelisk, which tradition declared contained the ashes of Julius Cæsar, but Fontana, on opening it, found it empty. Encouraged by his success, Sixtus, in the following year (1587), removed a smaller monolith from the mausoleum of Augustus to the church of St Maria Maggiore, which, with its companion (erected on Monte Cavallo by Pius VI.), had been brought to Rome by Claudius in the year 57.

Pliny mentions an obelisk, erected by Rameses, who employed one hundred and twenty thousand men on the work, and who was so fearful of any accident happening to it while being elevated, that, to make the workmen engaged in raising it doubly careful; the king fastened his son in such a position, that if the stone fell he must be crushed with its weight. Hardouin supposes this to be the monolith which Augustus refused to remove from its ancient site, because it was specially dedicated to the sun; and which the less scrupulous Constantine had conveyed from Heliopolis to Alexandria, leaving his son Constantius the honour of erecting it in the Circus Maximus. Sixtus removed it to the front of St John Lateran. This is the greatest obelisk in existence, the shaft alone being one hundred and nine feet in height, and the pedestal on which it stands no less than forty feet, while the base is rather more than nine feet square. The remainder of the obelisks at Rome are of less importance; among them is the so-called Pamphilian obelisk, ninety-nine feet high, in the Piazza Navano; one, one hundred feet high, in front of the Trinite de' Monti, taken by Clement XIII. from the gardens of Sallust; another, found near the temple of Isis, and placed before the Pantheon; and a small one, mounted with extraordinary bad taste, on the back of Bernini's elephant.

In front of the town-hall, and in the centre of the Place Royale of Arles, stands a plain granite monolith, forty-seven feet high, which was dug up near the walls of the town in 1675. This obelisk tapers more rapidly to its apex than is usual with its Egyptian prototypes, and is supposed to have been quarried in the Estrelle Mountains near Frejus. In 1676, it was re-erected on a pedestal twenty feet high, ornamented with four lions, and the apex surmounted with a blue ball decorated with golden fleur de lis. We suspect the Arles obelisk was in Sir Gardner Wilkinson's thoughts when he wrote: Modern Europeans depress the apex of their obelisks, and load the points of old Egyptian obelisks with crosses, rays, and other monstrosities; spoiling the very part in which the beauty of an obelisk consists; besides mounting them on pedestals with projecting mouldings, which disturb the continuous line of the sides, and are totally inconsistent with their character.'

Obelisks of rude form and small size were raised by the Scandinavians; there is one in a cemetery in the diocese of Berg, fourteen feet high, which is popularly believed to be the sword-blade of the giant reposing beneath turned into stone. Nor are such erections wanting nearer home: King Sueno's stone on the road near Forres, Morayshire, is an obelisk rising twenty-three feet above the ground, and going twelve or fifteen below it. One side is covered with rude sculptures, representing a warlike procession; the

other is nearly taken up by a large cross, beneath which are two figures apparently in the act of reconciliation. This strange relic of olden times is supposed to have been raised to commemorate the establishment of peace between Canute and Duncan, and the consequent departure of the Danes from Scotland. England is not famed for the production of monuments of departed greatness; her efforts in that line being more or less failures. The erection of the Albert obelisk affords an opportunity that must not be lost; and the difficulties in the way are just those which Englishmen glory in overcoming. Our own quarries can supply us with the means of outdoing the renowned works of the tyrants of the ancient world; and it is hard indeed if English liberality and English skill cannot erect a memorial worthy to endure, and testify, not to an age, but to all time, how a free people honoured, loved, and lamented the 'noble father of her kings to be;' who wore

The white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne,
And blackens every blot.

THE WITNESS.

IN THREE PARTS-PART IL

ALTHOUGH I was at the appointed spot before seven o'clock, Mr Davis had preceded me. He greeted me kindly, and when we were seated said, after pausing a few moments: My dear Miss Vernon, I cannot tell you how thankful I am to have a friend in you well known to me; but for this lucky chance, I know not what I could do: I am in the greatest perplexity, and I want advice.'

I muttered something about readiness and will ingness, feeling thoroughly perplexed myself, and he thanked me, and continued: Troubled as I am, I cannot but feel that there is something ridiculous in what I am about to confide to you. That fellow Mac has taken one of his second or third sights about Greyfriars. He is quieter and more rational this morning, but half last night he was raving about the atmosphere of crime that is around him. He says the feeling came on slightly at first in the kitchen; in the chapel, and especially in the abbot's gallery, it increased every moment, and at length overpowered him; and when he was recovering from his swoon, and saw Lady Dighton, he knew at once that it all

centred in her.'

"Good heavens !'

Ah, you may well exclaim. I am afraid to tell you half the things he said last night; and even this morning, he steadfastly maintains that there is dreadful sin somewhere in this place; he cannot yet particularise its exact nature, but it belongs to poor Lady Dighton in some way or other. One of his fancies is, that she either murdered Sir Thomas, or that he is still alive, and concealed in the abbey-probably in the secret apartments; and '

He is perfectly mad,' I interrupted impatiently. 'Poor, old, evil-tempered Sir Thomas died in his bed, just as it had been repeatedly foretold by the medical men that he would do; indeed, it was a wonder that he lived so long. The idea of his not being dead and buried! I know Dr Saunders saw him after his death, for I have more than once heard him say so, and speak of the expression of his countenance. What can we do with this madman, Mr Davis? How lucky it is that you spoke so decidedly yesterday about going away! I am very sorry; but you must see with me, that the sooner you can get him away the better.'

'Yes,' answered Mr Davis, with a sort of melancholy drollery-'yes, that is very true; but he won't go.'

'Not go?'

'No; positively no. He declares the clue has been put into his hands, and he must wait to see where it is to lead him. He never had this strange superknowing so strong upon him before. He promises to be quiet and passive, but here he must remain till further light comes to him.'

"This is intolerable; this cannot be permitted,' said I. You must write to his friends. Ĥas he any brothers?'

'Yes, two; and luckily the elder one, a very sensible good fellow, is now in Bath. I will write to him immediately, and urge him to come hither. Let me see-a letter posted to-day, will reach him tomorrow afternoon. If he starts directly, he may be here by Thursday evening.'

'Well,' said I, 'until he comes, we must do our best to amuse your friend, and keep him as much in the open air as possible. There are several places in this neighbourhood well worth seeing; we must plan some little expedition for each day; the girls will be delighted; and we must make the best of it we can. How unlucky it is! I have never seen Captain Sinclair so cheerful and so conversable as since you came.'

'I think,' said Mr Davis, 'your plan is as good a one as we can devise; it will interest Mac, and divert his mind; and as he is not yet strong, I hope he will come home tired, and be quiet. Two or three days will soon pass away.'

"Yes,' said I; 'but I must ask one thing;' and I paused.

'What may it be?' he asked.

'Please, never leave me and the girls one moment alone with him.'

'Oh, I will promise that,' he answered laughing. '1 am sure he is not at all dangerous; but I pledge myself to keep guard faithfully.

We then went into breakfast. The following is copied from my journal, written on the same day, late at night.

*

What a day this has been!-I can scarcely collect my thoughts to give a clear account of it--but I feel how important it may be to record all that has passed as soon as possible, to insure that nothing is misrepresented or omitted. Sleep is out of the question; so I will try to relate all that has happened, just as it occurred.

Mr M'Ilvar appeared at breakfast, looking pale and harassed, but perfectly quiet and collected in manner. He answered our inquiries by saying that he was quite well again; but he spoke seldom, and ate little. The weather had unfortunately changed since early morning, and the sky was too threatening to admit of any long expedition. We agreed, however, if it held up after luncheon, to take a walk we had been projecting for two or three days, to see some curious rocks about a mile off, on the sea-shore.

Mr Davis wrote his letter, and, with great satisfaction, I saw it myself put into the post-bag. He and I were so anxious for the walk, that we all set out soon after luncheon, although the clouds still looked dangerous. Mr M'Ilvar's spirits improved as we went on. He was much interested by the curious caves in the rocks, and their beautiful marine inhabitants, and the girls were delighted by his descriptions, and the information conveyed in them. At last, we turned our steps homewards, and had nearly reached one of the approaches to Greyfriars, when the rain, which we had quite forgotten, began to descend, and in a few minutes there was a regular Cornwall downfall. No shelter was near except a small house inhabited by an old woman, whom the late Sir Thomas considered to have some claim upon him. He had given her the cottage and garden during his lifetime, and left her an annuity in his will. I had been twice there with my pupils, both times to make some payment from the abbey, and at each visit had found