Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852
Author: Various
Language: English
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                     CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

  CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S
  INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.


  No. 450. NEW SERIES.   SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1852.   PRICE 1-1/2_d._



HINTS ON THE USEFUL-KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENT.


The advocates of the diffusion of useful knowledge among the great
body of the people, found one of their greatest difficulties to lie in
an inability on the part of the people themselves to see what benefit
they were to derive from the knowledge proposed to be imparted. This
knowledge consisted of such a huge mass of facts of all kinds, that
few could overcome a sense of hopelessness as attending every
endeavour to acquire it. Take botany alone, it was said. You have a
hundred thousand species of plants to become acquainted with--to learn
their names, and to what genera and orders they belong, besides
everything like a knowledge of their habitats, their properties, and
their physiology. Seeing that this is but one of the sciences, there
might well be a pause before admitting that the moral and intellectual
regeneration of our people was to be brought about by the
useful-knowledge movement.

There was here, however, a mistake on both hands, and one which we are
only now beginning to appreciate. It was not observed at first, that
there is a great distinction to be drawn between the relations of
science to its cultivators or investigators, and those which it bears
to the community at large. It is most important that a scientific
zoologist like Mr Waterhouse, or a profound physiologist like
Professor Owen, should determine and describe every species with the
minutest care, even to the slightest peculiarities in the markings of
a shell or the arrangements of a joint, because that exactness of
description is necessary in the foundations of the science. But it is
not necessary that every member of the public should follow the man of
science into all these minutiæ. It is not required of him, that he
should have the names of even the seventy families of plants at his
finger-ends, though that is not beyond the reach of most people. Some
summation of the facts, some adroit generalisation, if such be
attainable, is enough for him. The man of science is, as it were, a
workman employed in rearing up a structure for the man of the world to
look at or live in. The latter has no more necessary concern with the
processes of investigation and compilation, than a gentleman has with
the making of the mortar and hewing of the stones used in a house
which he has ordered to be built for his residence.

Were the facts of science thus generalised, it is surprising how
comprehensive a knowledge of the whole system of the universe every
person might have. Only generalise enough, and no one need to be
ignorant. Just in proportion as a man has little time to bestow on
learning, condense the more what you wish to impart, and the result,
where there is any fair degree of preparedness, will be all the
better. In the very last degree of exigency, explain that nature is a
system of fixed method and order, standing in a beneficial relation to
us, but requiring a harmonious conformity on our part, in order that
good may be realised and evil avoided, and you have taken your pupil
by one flight to the very summit of practical wisdom. The most
illustrious _savant_, while knowing some of the intermediate steps by
which that wisdom was attained, and having many delightful subjects of
reflection in the various phenomena involved in the generalisation,
cannot go an inch further.

This is putting the matter in its extreme form. We are entitled to
suppose that the bulk of mankind have some time to spend on the
acquirement of a knowledge of the natural system of things into which
their Maker has thrown them. Grant a little time to such a science,
for example, as botany; we would never attempt impressing a vast
nomenclature upon them. We would give them at once more pleasure and
more instruction in shewing some of the phenomena of vegetable
physiology: fundamental and profoundly interesting matters, of which
specific distinctions and external characters of all kinds are only
accidental results--that is, results determined by the outer phenomena
affecting the existence of plants. A single lesson on the profound
wonders of morphology would go further, we verily believe, in making
our pupil a man of science, than the committing of the whole Linnæan
system to memory. In zoology, again, we would leave the endless
details of minute description to the tomes of the scientific
naturalist, and be content to sketch animals in broad masses--first,
in regard to grades of organisation; and, second, in regard to family
types. The Feline Animal, we say, is one idea of the Creator--a
destructive creature of wonderful strength in comparison with its
bulk--of immense agility, furtive in its movements, furnished with
great powers for the destruction of others. Lion, tiger, panther,
ounce, lynx, jaguar, cat, are all essentially one creature--not the
slightest difference can be traced in their osteological structure,
hardly any in their habits. Why dwell, then, on minutiæ of external
appearances, if time presses, and there be much of more importance to
be learned? So, also, is the Cirrhopode one idea of the author of
nature. You may find a very respectable quarto account of the family,
tracing them in all their varieties; but a page might inform you of
all that is essential about the barnacle, curious as its history has
been, and you need not ponder on the quarto unless you have some
particular curiosity to gratify. The Types of nature, both in her
vegetable and animal departments are, after all, few. Describe each
comprehensively, group them all in correct relations to each other,
and display their various destinies and connections with the rest of
creation, and you enable your pupil to learn in a few weeks more than
Pliny mastered in a lifetime.

It appears to us that the reason why science is so coldly received in
ordinary society is, that either by reason of its unripeness for
generalisation, or of the tendency of its cultivators to keep
continually analysing and multiplying facts, it has not in general
been presented in propositions which the ordinary mind can comprehend
or make use of. We should be loath to urge it into generalisations for
which it was not prepared; but while this is duly avoided, we would
have it to be somewhat more vigilant than it usually is, in taking
opportunities of proceeding with those synthetical clumpings of facts
which we conceive to be so essential, on mere grounds of convenience,
to its success with the multitude. Better be a little dogmatical, than
insupportably tedious. Better have your knowledge in some order,
though not perhaps beyond correction, than in no order at all. It is
to be feared, however, that the thing wanting is not the sufficiency
of particulars out of which to make general or comprehensive truths,
but that of the requisite intellectual power and habit on the part of
the men of science. The constant working towards separate facts seems
to disqualify the mind for grouping or clustering them. Hundreds can
detect a new sphinx or butterfly in the fauna of a country or a
county, and are content with such small results, for one who can lay a
few facts together, and make one truth out of all. One could almost
believe, that there is a greater want of comprehensive intellect in
the walks of science, than in some other fields of labour which make
less pretension to an exertion of the mental faculties: for example,
merchandise. And does not that very appearance of continual peddling
amongst trifles, in some degree prevent the highest kind of minds from
going into the fields of science? There is here, it appears to us, a
great error to be corrected.

Another cause why science makes little way with the multitude is, that
there is too little connection to be observed between the ordinary
proceedings of the scientific and learned, and the practical good of
the community. The British Association meets, and has its week of
notoriety, and when we look into the resulting volume, what do we
find? Doubtless, many ingenious speculations and many curious
investigations, which may in the long-run prove beneficial in some
indirect way. But it must be admitted, that there is hardly anything
bearing directly upon the great interests of contemporary humanity.
The crying social evils of our time and country obtain no notice from
the recognised students of science. To all appearance, the political
error which legitimated scarcity would have never been put an end to
by them. The sanitary evils which press so severely upon the health
and morals of the common people, would apparently go on for ever, for
anything that philosophers have to say to the contrary. What concern
have they taken in the question of education, either in promoting its
extension to the masses, or improving its quality? Our national
councils, and every deliberative public body throughout the country,
spend one half their time in wrangling about the most contemptible
puerilities, without drawing one word of indignant comment, or one
effort at correction, from the learned. The studious are like stars,
and dwell apart. Busying themselves in a world of their own,
exercising no visible influence on the current of ordinary things, is
it to be wondered at that the common people of the world put them and
their pursuits almost as entirely out of account as they do the
proceedings at Melton Mowbray? We grant it is not desirable that the
_cui bono_ should be the ruling consideration in matters of science;
but we at the same time feel, that it would be well for it if it gave
a little more attention to the social and moral questions affecting
living interests, or at least endeavoured to bring its results to
account in practical improvements of general utility.[1]

We must recur after all to the maxim which it is mainly the object of
this paper to impress--that judicious generalisation is the
indispensable pre-requisite to a more general diffusion of knowledge.
To bring it to an apothegm--Let the man of science in seeking to
enlighten himself, pursue analysis; in seeking to enlighten the outer
public, he has no chance but in synthesis.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] We have much pleasure in acknowledging one instance of a movement
in the right direction, in connection with the Museum of Economic
Geology in London. While nothing can exceed the beauty of the
arrangements in that institution, for enabling everybody that chooses
to study the science from the actual objects, the professors have,
during the last winter, come forward with supererogatory zeal to teach
the working-classes, and to illustrate in every possible way the
bearings of the subject upon the arts and economy of life.



THE FALSE HAIR:

A TALE.


'Pray remember, Monsieur Lagnier, that I wish particularly to go out
this morning. It is now past one o'clock, and if you continue
endeavouring to do what is quite impossible, my hair will never be
dressed. You had much better plait it as usual.'

Adelaide de Varenne pronounced these words in a tone of pettishness
very unusual with her, as, giving vent to a long sigh of impatience
and weariness, she glanced hastily at the mirror on her toilet-table,
and saw there reflected the busy fingers of M. Lagnier, the
hairdresser, deliberately unfastening her hair, and preparing once
more to attempt the arrangement, which repeated failures had declared
to be an impossibility. He looked up, however, as he did so, and
seemed to read the expression of her features, for a comic mixture of
astonishment and dismay immediately overspread his own.

'Fifteen years,' he exclaimed, 'I have had the honour of daily
attending mademoiselle, and she never was angry with me before! What
can I have done to offend her?'

'Oh, nothing very serious,' replied the young girl, good-naturedly;
'but really I wish you would not dally so long. It is of very little
consequence, I think, how one's hair is worn.'

'Why, certainly every style is equally becoming to mademoiselle,' was
the old man's polite reply. 'Nevertheless, I had set my heart upon
arranging it to-day according to the last fashion: it would suit
mademoiselle _à ravir_.' Adelaide laughed.

'But you see it is impossible,' she said. 'I have so very little hair;
and I am sure it is not my fault--nor,' she added archly, 'the fault
of all those infallible pomades and essences recommended to me by
somebody I know.' M. Lagnier looked embarrassed.

'Mademoiselle is so gay, she finds amusement in everything,' he
replied. '_I_ cannot laugh upon so serious a subject.' Adelaide
laughed again more heartily than before, and M. Lagnier continued,
indignantly: 'Mademoiselle does not care for the loss of her beauty,
then?'

'Oh, I did not know there was any question of that!' and the young
girl suddenly resumed an expression of gravity, which completely
imposed upon the simple old man.

'You see, mademoiselle,' he continued earnestly, 'I have been
considering a long time what is best to be done. It is evident that my
pomades, usually so successful, have no effect upon _your_ hair;
owing, I suppose, to--to---- I can't say exactly what it is owing to.
It is very strange. I never knew them to fail before. Would
mademoiselle object to wearing a slight addition of false hair?' he
asked anxiously, after a moment's pause.

'Indeed, I should not like it,' was the reply. 'Besides, Monsieur
Lagnier, you have often told me that, in all Paris, it was impossible
to obtain any of the same shade as mine.'

'Ah, but I have succeeded at last!' exclaimed he; and as he spoke, he
drew triumphantly from his pocket a small packet, in which was
carefully enveloped a long lock of soft golden hair.

'How beautiful!' Adelaide involuntarily exclaimed. 'Oh, Monsieur
Lagnier, that is far finer and brighter than mine.'

'The difference is very slight indeed; it would be imperceptible when
both were braided together,' returned the hairdresser. 'Do, pray,
allow me, mademoiselle, to shew you the effect;' and without waiting
for a reply, he commenced the operation. In a few moments it was
completed, and the old man's delight was extreme. 'There!' he
exclaimed in ecstasy. 'I knew the style would suit you exactly. Oh,
mademoiselle, pray allow it to remain so; I should be _au désespoir_
were I obliged to unfasten it now.'

Adelaide hesitated: it was, however, no conscientious scruple which
occasioned her hesitation. She was a Frenchwoman, a beauty, and a
little--a very little--of a coquette. To add to her attractions by the
slight _supercheries_ of the toilet was, she thought, a very venial
sin; it was a thing which, in the society that surrounded her, was
looked upon as necessary, and sometimes even considered as a virtue.
She was a strange girl, a dreamer, an enthusiast, with a warm heart,
and a lively, but perhaps too easily-excited imagination. From her
infancy, she had been accustomed to reflect, to question, and to
reason; but left almost entirely to her own unguided judgment, the
habit was not in every respect favourable to the formation of her
character. It was, however, but little injured by it. She was one of
those favoured beings whom no prosperity can spoil, no education
entirely mislead, and whose very faults arise from the overflowings of
a good and generous nature. The thought which agitated her now was one
worthy of her gentle heart.

'Monsieur Lagnier,' she said earnestly, 'such beautiful hair could
only have belonged to a young person. She must have been in great
distress to part with it. Do you know her? Did she sell it to you?
What is her name? I cannot bear to wear it: I shall be thinking of her
continually.'

'Ah, Mademoiselle Adelaide, that is so like you! Why, I have provided
half the young ladies in Paris with false tresses, and not one has
ever asked me the slightest question as to how or where they were
obtained. Indeed, I should not often have been able to reply. In this
case, however, it is different. I bought it myself, and consequently
can give you a little information respecting it. Yesterday evening, I
was standing at my door in the Rue St Honoré, when a young girl,
attracted no doubt by the general appearance of my window, stopped to
admire the various articles exhibited there. She had a pretty face,
but I scarcely looked at that; I only saw her hair, her beautiful,
rich, golden hair. It was pushed carelessly behind her ears, and half
concealed beneath a little white cap. "Mademoiselle," I said,
accosting her--for I could not bear that she should pass the door--"is
there anything that you would like to buy? a pair of combs, for
instance. I have some very cheap; although," I added, with a sigh, as
she appeared about to move on, "such lovely hair as yours requires no
ornament." At these words, she returned quickly, and looking into my
face, exclaimed: "Will you buy my hair, monsieur?" "Willingly, my
child," I replied; and in another instant she was seated in my shop,
and the bright scissors were gleaming above her head. Then my heart
failed me, and I felt half inclined to refuse the offer. "Are you not
sorry, child, to part with your hair?" I asked. "No," she answered
abruptly; and gathering it all together in her hand, she put it into
mine. The temptation was too great; besides, I saw that she herself
was unwilling that we should break the contract. Her countenance never
changed once during the whole time, and when all was over, she
stooped, and picking up a lock which had fallen upon the ground, asked
in an unfaltering voice: "May I keep this, monsieur?" I said yes, and
paid her; and then she went away, smiling, and looking quite happy,
poor little thing. After all, mademoiselle, what is the use of beauty
to girls in her class of life? She is better without it.'

'And her name--did you not ask her name?' inquired Adelaide
reproachfully.

'Why, yes, mademoiselle, I did. She told me that it was Lucille
Delmont, and that she was by trade a _fleuriste_. It was all the
information she would give me.'

'What could she have wanted with the money? Perhaps she was starving:
there is so much misery in Paris!' continued Mademoiselle de Varenne,
after a pause.

'She was very pale and thin,' said the hairdresser; 'but then so are
the generality of our young citizens. Do not make yourself unhappy
about it, mademoiselle; I shall see her again, probably, and shall
endeavour to find out every circumstance respecting her.' With these
words, M. Lagnier respectfully took leave, having by one more
expressive glance testified his delighted approval of the alteration
which had taken place in the young lady's appearance.

Adelaide, having summoned her maid, continued her toilet in a listless
and absent manner. Her thoughts were fixed upon the young girl whose
beauty had been sacrificed for hers, and an unconquerable desire to
learn her fate took possession of her mind. Her intended disposal of
the morning seemed quite to be forgotten; and she was on the point of
forming new plans, very different from the first, when the lady to
whose care she had been confided during the absence of her father from
town, entered the apartment, and aroused her from her reverie by
exclaiming: 'Ah, you naughty girl! I have been waiting for you this
half hour. Was not the carriage ordered to take us to the Tuileries?'

'Yes, indeed, it was; but I hope you will excuse me: I had almost
forgotten it.' And Adelaide immediately related to her friend the
circumstance which had occurred, and begged her aid in the discovery
of Lucille. Madame d'Héranville laughed--reasoned, but in vain; and,
finding Adelaide resolved, she at length consented to accompany her
upon the search, expressing as she did so her entire conviction that
it would prove useless and unsatisfactory.

The day was spent in visits to the principal _modistes_ of Paris; but
from none could any information be gained concerning the young
flower-girl. None had ever even heard her name. Adelaide was returning
home, disappointed, but not discouraged. Still resolved to continue
her endeavours, she had just announced to Madame d'Héranville her
intention of visiting upon the following day the shops of an inferior
class, when the carriage was suddenly arrested in its course by the
crowd of vehicles which surrounded it, and they found themselves
exactly before the door of a small warehouse of the description she
alluded to. She was about to express a wish to enter, it being still
early, when her attention was attracted by two persons who stood
conversing near the door, and whose voices, slightly raised, were
distinctly audible. They had excited the interest and curiosity of
both Adelaide and her companion by the earnestness of their manner,
and by the expression of sorrow depicted upon the countenance of the
elder speaker, a young man of about twenty-five years of age, who,
from his costume, as well as accent, appeared to be a stranger in
Paris.

'I have promised--will you not trust me?' he said in a
half-reproachful tone; and Adelaide bent eagerly forward to catch a
glimpse of the young girl to whom these words were addressed; but her
face was turned away, and the large hood of a woollen cloak was drawn
over her head, almost completely concealing her features.

'I do trust you,' she said in reply to the young man's words--'I do
indeed. And now, good-by, dear André; we shall meet again soon--in our
own beautiful Normandie.' And she held out her hand, which he took and
held for an instant without speaking.

'May I not conduct you home?' he asked at length.

'No, André; it is better that we should part here. We must not trust
too much to our courage, it has failed us so often already.' And as
she spoke, she raised her head, and looked up tearfully at her
companion, disclosing as she did so a face of striking beauty,
although worn and pallid to a painful degree, and appearing even more
so than it really was from the total absence of her hair. The tears
sprang to Adelaide's eyes. In the careworn countenance before her she
read a bitter tale. Almost instinctively, she drew forth her purse,
and leaning over the side of the carriage, called 'Lucille! Lucille!'
But the young girl did not hear her; she had already turned, and was
hastening rapidly away, while André stood gazing after her, as if
uncertain of the reality of what had just occurred. He was so deeply
engrossed in his reflections, that he did not hear his name repeatedly
pronounced by both Adelaide and her friend. The latter at length
directed the servant to accost him, and the footman was alighting for
that purpose, when two men turned quickly the corner of the street,
and perceiving André, stopped suddenly, and one of them exclaimed:
'Ah, good-evening, Bernard; you are just the very fellow we want;' and
taking André by the arm, he drew him under the shade of a _porte
cochère_, and continued, as he placed a small morocco case in his
hand: 'Take care of this for me, André, till I return: I shall be at
your lodgings in an hour. Giraud and I are going to the Cité, and as
this pocket-book contains valuables, we are afraid of losing it. _Au
revoir_!'

André made no reply. He placed the pocket-book carelessly in his
bosom, and his two friends continued hastily their way. He was himself
preparing to depart, when the footman touched him gently on the
shoulder, and told him of Mademoiselle de Varenne's wish to speak to
him. André approached the carriage, surprised and half abashed at the
unlooked-for honour; then taking off his cap, waited respectfully for
one of the ladies to address him. At the same instant, a
police-officer seized him roughly by the arm, and exclaimed: 'Here is
one of them! I saw them all three together not two hours ago!' And
calling to a comrade who stood near, he was about to lead André away.
At first, the young man made no resistance; but his face grew deadly
pale, and his lip trembled violently.

'What do you want? What have I done?' he demanded at length, turning
suddenly round to face his accuser; but the latter only replied by a
laugh, and an assurance that he would know all about it presently. A
slight struggle ensued, in the midst of which the pocket-book fell to
the ground, and a considerable number of bank-notes bestrewed the
pavement. At this sight, André seemed suddenly to understand the cause
of his arrest; he stood for an instant gazing at the notes with a
countenance of horror; then, with an almost gigantic effort, he broke
from the grasp which held him, and darted away in the direction which
had before been taken by the young girl. He was immediately followed
by the police; but although Adelaide and her friend remained for some
time watching eagerly the pursuit, they were unable to ascertain
whether he had succeeded in effecting his escape.

'I am sure I hope so, poor fellow!' murmured Adelaide as they drove
homewards--'for Lucille's sake, as well as for his.'

'You have quite made up your mind, then, as to its being Lucille that
we saw?' said Madame d'Héranville with a smile. 'If it was,' she
added, more gravely, 'I think she can scarcely merit all the trouble
you are giving yourself on her account. Her friendship for André does
not speak much in her favour.'

'Why not? Surely you do not think _he_ stole the pocket-book?' asked
Adelaide, in undisguised dismay.

'Perhaps not; but his intimacy with those who did, leads one to
suppose that he is not unaccustomed to such scenes. You remember the
old proverb: "Dis moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai qui tu es."'

'Do you not think we should give information respecting what we saw?
He was certainly unconscious of its contents?' asked Adelaide again,
after a short silence.

'He appeared so,' returned Madame d'Héranville; 'and I shall write
to-morrow to the police-office. Perhaps our evidence may be useful to
him.'

'To-morrow!' thought Adelaide; but she did not speak her thoughts
aloud. 'And to-night he must endure all the agonies of suspense!' And
then she looked earnestly at her companion's face, and wondered if,
when hers, like it, was pale and faded, her heart should also be as
cold. A strange, sad feeling crept over her, and she continued quite
silent during the remainder of the drive. Her thoughts were still busy
in the formation of another plan for the discovery of Lucille, when,
upon her arrival at home, she was informed that M. Lagnier desired
anxiously to see her, having something to communicate.

'Mademoiselle, I have not been idle,' he exclaimed, immediately upon
entering the apartment. 'Here is Lucille's address, and I have seen
her mother. Poor things!' he added, 'they are indeed in want. Their
room is on the sixth floor, and one miserable bed and a broken chair
are all the furniture. For ornament, there was a rose-tree, in a
flower-pot, upon the window-seat: it was withered, like its young
mistress!'

'They are not Parisians?' inquired Adelaide.

'No, no, mademoiselle. From what the mother said, I picked up quite a
little romance concerning them. The husband died two years ago,
leaving them a pretty farm, and a comfortable home in Normandie.
Lucille was very beautiful. All the neighbours said so, and Mrs
Delmont was proud of her child. She could not bear her to become a
peasant's wife, and brought her here, hoping that her beauty might
secure to her a better fate. The young girl had learned a trade, and
with the assistance of that, and the money they had obtained upon
selling the farm, they contrived to manage very well during the first
year. Lucille made no complaint, and her mother thought she was happy.
A Parisian paid her attention, and asked her to become his wife. She
refused; but as he appeared rich, the mother would not hear of
declining the offer. She encouraged him to visit them as much as
possible, and hoped at length to overcome Lucille's dislike to the
marriage. One evening, however, as they were all seated together, a
young man entered the room. He had been an old lover of Lucille's--a
neighbour's son, and an early playmate. She sprang forward eagerly to
meet him, and the rich pretender left the place in a fit of jealous
anger, and they have not seen him since. Then troubles came, one
following another, until at last they fell into the state of
destitution in which I found them. André Bernard, who had quarrelled
with his parents in order to follow them, could find no work, and
every sou that Lucille gained was given to him, to save him, as she
said, from ruin or from sin. Last week she sold her hair, to enable
him to return home. She had made him promise that he would do so, and
to night he is to leave Paris.'

'It is he, then, whom we saw arrested!' exclaimed Adelaide; 'and he
will not be able to return home. Oh, let us go to Lucille at once! Do,
pray, come with me, Madame d'Héranville!' and turning to her friend,
she pleaded so earnestly, and the large tears stood so imploringly in
her eyes, that it was impossible to resist. Madame d'Héranville
refastened her cloak, and soon afterwards, with Adelaide and M.
Lagnier, found herself ascending the steep and dilapidated staircase
of the house inhabited by the Delmonts. Adelaide seated herself upon
the highest step, to await the arrival of her friend, whose agility in
mounting was not quite equal to her own. As she did so, a loud and
angry voice was heard proceeding from the apartment to which this
staircase led. It was followed by a sound as of a young girl weeping,
and then a few low, half-broken sentences were uttered in a voice of
heart-broken distress.

'Mother, dear mother,' were the words, 'do not torture me. I am so
ill--so wretched, I wish I were dead.'

'Ill! wretched! ungrateful girl!' was the reply. 'And whose fault is
it that you are so? Not mine! Blame yourself, if you will, and him,
your darling André. What will he do now that you have no more to give?
nothing even that you can sell, to supply him with the means of
gratifying his extravagance. You will soon see how sincere he is in
his affection, and how grateful he feels for all the sacrifices that
you have made--sacrifices, Lucille, that you would not have made for
me.'

'Mother,' murmured the poor girl in a tone of heart-broken reproach,
'I have given my beauty for him; but I have given my life for you.'
Adelaide listened no more. Shocked beyond measure at the misery
expressed in the low, earnest voice of Lucille, she knocked at the
door of the apartment, and scarcely waiting for permission, lifted the
latch and entered hurriedly.

Lucille was seated at a window working, or seeming at least to do so;
for her head was bent over a wreath of artificial flowers, through
which her emaciated fingers passed with a quick convulsive motion. It
needed not, however, a very nice observation to discover that the work
progressed but slowly. The very anxiety with which she exerted
herself, seemed to impede her movements, and the tears which fell from
time to time upon the leaves obscured her sight, and often completely
arrested her hand. She did not raise her head as Adelaide entered; too
deeply engrossed in her own sadness, she had not heard the opening of
the door, or her mother's exclamation of surprise, and Mademoiselle de
Varenne was at her side before she was in the least conscious of her
presence. Adelaide touched her gently on the arm.

'What is the matter, Lucille?' she asked. 'Tell me: I will do all I
can to help you.' At these words the mother interposed, and said
softly: 'I am sure, madame, you are very kind to speak so to her. I am
afraid you will find her an ungrateful girl; if you had heard her
words to me just now--to me, her own mother!'

'I did hear them,' returned Adelaide. 'She said she had given her life
for you. What did she mean? What did you mean, Lucille?' she asked,
gently addressing the young girl, whose face was buried in her hands.

'Forgive me, mother; I was wrong,' murmured Lucille; 'but I scarcely
know what I say sometimes. Mademoiselle,' she continued earnestly, 'I
am not ungrateful; but if you knew how all my heart was bound to home,
and how miserable I am here, you would pity and forgive me, if I am
often angry and impatient.'

'You were never miserable till he came,' retorted the mother; 'and now
that he is going, you will be so no more. It will be a happy day for
both of us when he leaves Paris.' At this moment heavy steps were
heard ascending the stairs; then voices raised as if in anger. Lucille
started up; in an instant her pale cheek was suffused with the deepest
crimson, her eye flashed, and her whole frame trembled violently. Her
mother grasped her by the hand, but she freed herself with a sudden
effort, and darting past Madame d'Héranville and the hairdresser, who
had entered some time before, she ran out upon the landing. Adelaide
followed, and at once perceived the cause of her emotion. André was
rapidly ascending the stairs, his countenance pale, and his whole
demeanour indicating the agitation of his feelings. He was closely
followed by the police-officer, whose voice, as he once more grasped
his prisoner, appalled the terrified Lucille. 'You have given us a
sharp run,' he exclaimed, 'and once I thought you had got off. You
should not have left your hiding-place till dark, young gentleman.'
And, heedless of the frantic and agonised gestures of the unhappy
youth, he drew him angrily away.

Lucille sprang forward, and taking André's hand in hers, she looked
long and earnestly in his face. He read in her eyes the question she
did not dare to ask, and replied, as a crimson blush mounted to his
forehead: 'I am accused of robbery, Lucille, and many circumstances
are against me. I may perhaps be condemned. I came here to tell you of
my innocence, and to return you this;' and he placed a gold piece in
her hand. It was the money she had given him for his journey--the
fruit of the last sacrifice she had made. She scarcely seemed to
understand his words, and still looked up inquiringly. 'Lucille,' he
continued, 'they are taking me to prison; I cannot go home as I
promised; but you will not think me guilty. How could I do what I knew
would break your heart?'

She smiled tenderly and trustfully upon him; then letting fall his
hand, she pushed him gently away, and whispered: 'Go with him, André.
Justice will be done. I am no longer afraid.' Madame d'Héranville and
Adelaide at this moment approached, and eagerly related what they had
seen, both expressing their conviction of the young man's innocence.

'It is not to me you must speak, ladies,' returned the gendarme,
wonderfully softened by their words. 'If you will be so good as to
give me your names, and come to-morrow to our office, I have no doubt
that your evidence will greatly influence the magistrate in favour of
the prisoner.' The ladies gave their names, and promised to attend the
court the following morning; and shortly afterwards, they left the
house, having by their kind promises reassured the weeping girl, and
succeeded in softening her mother's anger towards her. The next day
they proceeded early to the court. As Adelaide entered, she looked
round for Lucille, and perceived her standing near the dock, her
earnest eyes fixed upon the prisoner, and encouraging him from time to
time with a look of recognition and a smile. But notwithstanding all
her efforts, the smile was a sad one; for her heart was heavy, and the
appearance of the magistrate was not calculated to strengthen her
hope. André had declared his innocence--his complete ignorance of the
contents of the pocket-book his friend had placed in his hand; but his
very intimacy with such men operated strongly against him. Both Giraud
and his companion were well known to the police as men of bad
character, and very disreputable associates. The prisoner's
declaration, therefore, had but little effect upon those to whom it
was addressed; and the magistrate shook his head doubtfully as he
listened. Madame d'Héranville and Adelaide then related what they had
seen--describing the young man's listless look as he received the
book, and endeavouring to prove, that had André been aware of its
contents, his companion need scarcely have made the excuse he did for
leaving it with him. At this moment, a slight movement was observed
among the crowd, and two men were brought forward, and placed beside
André. At their appearance, a scream escaped from Lucille; and,
turning to her mother, she pointed them out, while the name of Jules
Giraud burst from her lips. Hearing his own name, one of the men
looked up, and glanced towards the spot where the young girl stood.
His eyes met hers, and a flush overspread his face; then, after a
momentary struggle, which depicted itself in the workings of his
countenance, he exclaimed: 'Let the boy go: we have injured him enough
already. He is innocent.'

'What do you mean?' inquired the magistrate; while a look of heartfelt
gratitude from Lucille urged Giraud to proceed.

'André knows nothing of this robbery,' he continued; 'his sole
connection with us arises from a promise we gave him, to find him
employment in Paris; and all the money he received we took from him
under the pretence of doing so. Yesterday morning, we met him for the
purpose of again deceiving him, but failed. He had a louis-d'or; but
it had been given him by his _fiancée_, that he might return home, and
he was determined to fulfil his promise. I would have taken his last
sou; for he'--and the destined _forçat_ ground his teeth--'for he owed
me a debt! However,' he continued recklessly, 'it is all over now. I
am off for the galleys, that's clear enough; and before starting, I
would do something for Lucille.'

'How had the accused harmed you?' asked the magistrate.

Giraud hesitated; but Madame Delmont came forward, and exclaimed: 'I
will tell you, monsieur. He wished to marry my daughter himself; and
I,' she added, in a tone of deep self-reproach, 'would almost have
forced her to consent.'

The same evening, Madame Delmont, André, and Lucille were seated
together, conversing upon what had passed, and deliberating as to the
best means of accomplishing an immediate return to Normandie, when a
gentle tap was heard at the door, and the old hairdresser entered the
room. He appeared embarrassed; but at length, with a great effort
restraining his emotion, he placed a little packet in Lucille's hand,
and exclaimed: 'Here, child, I did not give you half enough for that
beautiful hair of yours. Take this, and be sure you say nothing about
it to any one, especially to Mademoiselle Adelaide;' and without
waiting for one word of thanks, he was about to hurry away, when he
was stopped by Mademoiselle de Varenne in person.

'Ah, Monsieur Lagnier,' she merrily exclaimed, 'this is not fair. I
hoped to have been the first; and yet I am glad that you forestalled
me,' she added, as she looked into the bright glistening eyes of the
old hairdresser. 'My father has just arrived in town, Lucille,' she
continued, after a short pause, 'and he is interested in you all. He
offers André the porter's lodge at the château, and I came here
immediately to tell you the good news. It is not very far from your
old home, and I am sure you will like it. Do not forget to take with
you this poor rose-tree; it looks like you, quite pale for want of
air. There! you must not thank me,' she exclaimed, as Madame Delmont,
André, and Lucille pressed eagerly forward to express their gratitude:
'it is I, rather, that should thank you. I never knew till now how
very happy I might be.'

And as Adelaide de Varenne pronounced these words, a bright smile
passed across her face. The old hairdresser gazed admiringly upon her,
and doubted for a moment whether the extraordinary loveliness he saw
owed any part of its charm to the lock of false hair.



CLOUDS OF LIGHT.


In March of the year 1843, a remarkable beam of light shot suddenly
out from the evening twilight, trailing itself along the surface of
the heavens, beneath the belt stars of Orion. That glimmering beam was
the tail of a comet just whisked into our northern skies, as the rapid
wanderer skirted their precincts in its journey towards the sun. To
the watchful eyes of our latitudes, the unexpected visitant presented
an aspect that was coy and modest in the extreme; its head, indeed,
was scarcely ever satisfactorily in sight. But it dealt far otherwise
with the more favoured climes of the south. At the Cape of Good Hope,
it was seen distinctly in full daylight, and almost touching the solar
disk; and at night appeared with the brilliancy of a first-class star,
with a luminous band flowing out from it to a distance some hundred
times longer than the moon's face is wide. Few persons who caught a
glimpse of that shining tail, either as it fitfully revealed itself in
our heavens, or as it steadily blazed upon the opposite hemisphere of
the earth, were led to form adequate notions of the magnificence of
the object they were contemplating. No one, unaided by the teaching of
science, could have conceived that the streak of light, so readily
compressed within the narrow limits of an eye-glance, stretched out
170 millions of miles in length.

The comet comes from regions of unknown remoteness, and rushes, with
continually increasing speed, towards our own source of warmth and
light--the genial sun. When it has reached within a certain distance
of this object, it appears, however, to overshoot the mark of its
desire, as if too ardent in the chase, and then sways round with
fearful impetus, beginning reluctantly to settle out into space again,
and moving with less and less velocity as it goes, until its misty
form is once more withdrawn by distance from human sight. When the
comet of 1813 swept round the sun in this way, it was so near to the
shining surface of the solar orb, that it must have been rushing for
the time through a temperature forty-seven thousand times higher than
any which the torrid region of the earth ever feels. Such heat would
have been twenty-four times more than enough to melt rock-crystal. The
overburdened sense experiences a feeling of relief in the mere
knowledge, that the comet passed this fiery ordeal as the lightning's
flash might have done. In two short hours, it had shifted its place
from one side to the other of the solar sphere. In sixty little
minutes, it had moved from a region in which the heat was forty
thousand times greater than the fiercest burning of the earth's torrid
zone, into another, in which the temperature was four times less. The
comet might well have a glowing tail as it came from such a realm of
fire. Flames that were colder by many hundred times, would make the
dull black iron shine with incandescent brightness.

As, however, it is the comet's nature to guard its ornamental
appendages with jealous care, it may be conceived that this tail of
170 million miles might prove a somewhat troublesome travelling
companion in so rapid a journey. Comets always turn their tails
prudentially out of harm's way as they whisk through the neighbourhood
of the solar blaze. In whatever direction these bodies may be moving,
they are always seen to project their caudal beams directly _from_ the
sun. Imagine the case of a rigid straight stick, held by one end in
the hand, and brandished round through a half-circle. The outer end of
the stick would move through a considerable sweep. If the stick were
170 million miles long, the extent of the sweep would be not less than
500 million miles! Through such a stupendous curve did the comet of
1843 whirl its tail in two little hours as it rounded the solar orb.
It is hardly possible to believe, that one and the same material
substance could have been subjected to the force of such motion
without being shattered into a myriad fragments. Sir John Herschel
very beautifully suggests, that the comet's tail, during this
wonderful perihelion passage, resembled a negative shadow cast beyond
the comet, rather than a substantial body; a momentary impression made
upon the luminiferous ether where the solar influence was in temporary
obscuration. But this suggestion can only be received as an ingenious
and expressive hint; it cannot be taken as an explanation. There is as
much difficulty, as will be presently seen, in the way of admitting
that comets have shadows of any kind, as there would be in compassing
the idea that bodies of enormous length can be whirled round through
millions of miles in the minute. The truth is, the comet's tail is yet
an unguessed puzzle, and vexes even the wits of the wise. It keeps
grave men seated on the horns of a dilemma, so long as their attention
is fixed upon its capricious charms.

The comet's tail is always thrown out away from the sun, just as the
shadow of an opaque body in the same position would be. But this is
not all that can be said of it. It is not only cast away from the sun:
it is really cast _by the sun_--shadow-like, although not of the
nature of shadow. It only appears when the comet gets near to the
sun's effulgence, and is lost altogether when that body gets far from
the great source of mundane light and heat. It is raised from the
comet's body, by the power of sunshine, as mist is from damp ground.
When Halley's Comet of 1682 approached the fierce ordeal of its
perihelion position, the exhalation of its tail was distinctly
perceived. First, little jets of light streamed out towards the sun,
as if bursting forth elastically under the influence of the scorching
blaze; very soon these streams were stopped, and turned backwards by
the impulse of some new force, and as they flowed in this fresh
direction, became the diverging streaks of the tail. Not only a
vapour-forming power, but also a vapour-drifting power, is brought
into play in the process of tail formation; and this latter must be
some occult agent of considerable interest in a scientific point of
view, as well as of considerable importance in a dynamic one, for it
is a principle evidently antagonistic to the great prevailing
attribute of gravitation, so universally present in matter. The
comet's tail is the only substance known that is repelled instead of
being attracted by the sun.

The repulsive power to which the development of the comet's tail is
due, is one of extraordinary energy. The comet of 1680 shot out its
tail through something like 100 million miles in a couple of days.
Most probably, much of the matter that is thus thrown off from the
cometic nucleus is never collected again, but is dissipated into
space, and lost for ever to the comet. The tail of the comet of 1680
was seen in its greatest brilliancy soon before the solar approach;
this was, however, an exception to the general rule. Comets nearly
always have the finest tails, and present altogether the most
beautiful appearance, immediately _after_ they have been in the
closest proximity to the sun.

The comet's tail seems, in reality, to be a thin oblong case of
vapour, formed out of the cometic substance by the increasing
intensity of the sunshine, and enclosing the denser portion of that
substance at one end. The diverging streams which it displays upon the
sky are merely the retiring edges of the rounded case, where the
greatest depth of luminous matter comes into sight. As the comet nears
the sun, much of its substance is vaporised for the construction of
this envelope; but as it goes off again into remoteness, the vaporous
envelope is once more condensed. The tail may then be seen to flow
back towards the head, out of which it was originally derived.

But here, again, a difficulty presents itself. The comet's tail is
believed by most of the illustrious astronomers of the day, to be the
body converted into vapour by solar influence. If it be so, the
vaporising process must be a much more subtile one than any that could
be performed in our alembics, for the comet's substance is already all
vapour before the distillation commences. The faintest stars have been
seen shining through the densest parts of comets without the slightest
loss of light, although they would have been effectually concealed by
a trifling mist extending a few feet from the earth's surface. Most
comets appear to have bright centres--nuclei, as they are called; but
these nuclei are not solid bodies, for as soon as they are viewed by
powerful telescopes, they become as diffused and transparent as the
fainter cometic substance. Comets are properly atmospheres without
contained spheres; enormous clouds rushing along in space, and bathed
with its sunshine, for they have no light excepting sunlight. They
become brighter and brighter as they get deeper within the solar
glare, and dimmer and paler as they float outwards from the same. The
light of the comet only differs from the light of a cloud that is
drifted across the cerulean sky of noon, in the fact, that it is
reflected from the inside as well as the outside of the vaporous
substance. The material illuminated reflects light, and is permeated
by light, at once. In this respect it resembles air as much as
cloud--the blueness of the sky is the sunlit air seen through the
lower and inner strata of itself. In the same way, the whiteness of
the comet is sunlit vapour seen through portions of itself. The
sunbeams pass as readily through the entire thickness of the cometic
substance as they do through our own highly permeable atmosphere.

The belief in the comet's surpassing thinness and lightness is not a
mere speculative opinion. It rests upon incontrovertible proof. In
1770, Lexell's Comet passed within six times the moon's distance of
the earth, and was considerably retarded in its motion by the
terrestrial attraction. If its mass had been of equal amount with the
earth's mass, its attraction would have influenced the earth's
movement in a like degree in return, and the earth would have been so
held back in its orbitual progress in consequence, that the year would
have been lengthened to the extent of three hours. The year was not,
however, lengthened on that occasion by so much as the least
perceptible fraction of a second; hence it can be shewn, that the
comet must have been composed of some substance many thousand times
lighter than the terrestrial substance. Newton was of opinion, that a
few ounces of matter would be sufficient for the construction of the
largest comet's tail.

Light as the comet's substance is, it is not, however, light enough to
escape the grasp of the sun's gravitating attraction. When the mass of
thin vapour is rushing through the obscurity of starlit space, so far
from the sun that the solar sphere looks but the brightest of the
stellar host, it feels the influence of the solar mass, remote as it
is, and is constrained to bend its course towards it. Onwards the thin
vapour goes, the sun waxing bigger and bigger with each stage of
approach, until at last the little star has become a fiery globe,
filling up half the heavens with its vast proportions, and stretching
from the horizon to the zenith of the visible concave. The great comet
of 1680 came in this way from a region of space where the sun looked
but half as wide as the planet Mars in the sky, and where the solar
heat was imperceptible, the surrounding temperature being 612 degrees
colder than freezing water, into another in which the sun filled up
140 times greater width of the sky than it does with us, and where the
heat was some hundred times higher than the temperature of boiling
water. It was then only 880,000 miles away from the solar surface, and
would have fallen to it in three minutes, in obedience to its
attraction, if the impetus of its motion in a different direction had
been on the instant destroyed or arrested. But this impetus proved too
great for the attraction, light as the material of the moving body
was. When the comet has approached comparatively near to the grand
source of attraction, the speed of its accelerating motion has become
so excessive, that it is able to withstand the augmented solicitation
it is subjected to, and move outwards in a more direct course. It
goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and
less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so
sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able
to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history
of the comet's course.

Thin comet vapours drift through space, sustained by exactly the same
influences that uphold dense planetary spheres. They are supported in
the void by the combined effects of motion and attraction. Their own
impetus strives to carry them one way, while the sun's attraction
draws them another, and they are thus constrained to move along paths
that are intermediate to the lines of the two impulses. Now, when
bodies are driven in this way by two differently acting powers, they
must travel along curved lines, if both the driving forces are in
continued operation, for a new direction of motion is then impressed
on them at each succeeding instant. There are three kinds of curved
lines along which bodies thus doubly driven may move: the _circular_
curve, which goes round a central point at an unvarying equal
distance, and returns into itself; the _elliptical_ curve, which
returns into itself by a route that is drawn out considerably in one
direction; and the _hyperbolic_ curve, that never returns into itself
at all, but has, on the other hand, a course which sets outwards each
way for ever. The _parabolic_ curve, as it is called, is a line
partaking of the closeness of the ellipse on the one hand, and the
openness of the hyperbola on the other. A parabola is an ellipse
passing into a hyperbola; or, in other words, it is a part of an
ellipse whose length, compared with its breadth, is too great to be
estimated, and is consequently deemed to be endless for all practical
purposes.

In most instances, comets move in space, about the sun, in ellipses so
very lengthened, that their paths seem to be parabolas as long as the
cloudy bodies are visible in the sky. Two of them, Ollier's Comet and
Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of
seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited
portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the
orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are
never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into
visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years.
These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of
our world-system in the strictest sense. Their paths, although more
eccentric, are all contained in planes that nearly correspond with the
planes of the planetary orbits, and they travel in these paths in the
same general direction with their planetary brethren in every case.
The planetoid comets of short period are--Encke's, De Vico's,
Brorsen's, D'Arrest's, Biela's, and Fage's. The comet of 1843 is half
suspected to belong to the group, and to be also a periodic body,
revisiting our regions punctually at intervals of twenty-one years.

The comet's motions strikingly illustrate the almost absolute voidness
of space. If the thin vapour experienced any resistance while moving,
its free passage would be checked, although that resistance was many
thousand times less than the one the hand feels when waved in the air.
It is found, however, that Encke's Comet does indicate the presence of
some such resistance. It goes slower and slower with each return, and
contracts the dimensions of its elliptical journey progressively. But
it must be remembered, that this is one of the close comets that never
gets well out of the solar domain in which our neighbouring planets
float. The resisting medium which opposes its journey may be merely an
ethereal solar atmosphere surrounding the sun, as our air surrounds
the earth, but spreading to distances of millions instead of tens of
miles. On the other hand, it must be remembered also that starlight
passes through universal space, and is everywhere spread out therein,
and that it is hardly possible to think of starlight as an existence
without some sort of material reality. Some physicists believe that
Encke's Comet, with its retarded motions, will some day fall into the
sun; while others fancy that such a consummation can never take place,
because successive portions of its substance will be thrown off by the
tail-forming process with each perihelion return; so that long before
the cometic mass could reach the sun, it will have been altogether
dissipated into space, and nothing will be left to accomplish the
final state of the fall.

The great peculiarity of cometic paths, as compared with the planetary
ones, is, that they consist of ellipses of very much more eccentric
proportions; and that, therefore, the bodies moving in them, go
alternately to much greater and less distances from the sun than the
planets do. It must not be imagined, however, that all comets revolve
about the sun even in the most lengthened ellipses. Three at
least--the comets of 1723, 1771, and 1818--are known to have moved
along hyperbolic paths instead of parabolic or elliptical ones. These
comets, therefore, can make but one appearance in our skies. Having
once shewn themselves there, and vanished, they are lost to us for
ever. They are but stray and chance visitors to the domains of our
sun, and refuse to submit themselves, with the more regular members of
their fraternity, to the regulation-arrangements of our system, or to
appear punctually at the systematic roll-call therein instituted. They
are the true free-wanderers of the Infinite, passing from shore to
shore of immensity, and presenting themselves, for short and uncertain
intervals, to star after star. When they flit through our skies, they
shew themselves in all possible positions, and move along all possible
directions. They sometimes, however, yield too much to temptation, and
have to suffer the penalty of a short imprisonment in consequence.
Lexell's Comet, for instance, rushed in its hyperbolic path too near
to Jupiter, and was caught in the attraction of its mass, and made to
dance attendance on the sun through two successive elliptical
revolutions. At the end of the second, the influence that had
impounded the comet came, however, into play oppositely, and restored
it again to its wandering life and hyperbolic courses. Its cloudy form
has not presented itself amongst our stars since 1770, when its visit
was thus strangely received by Jupiter.

Twenty-three comets were seen by the naked eye during the sixteenth
century, 12 were seen in the seventeenth, 8 in the eighteenth, and 9
in the first half of the nineteenth. This does not, however, give
anything like an adequate idea of the number of comets really in
existence. When Kepler was asked how many comets he thought there
were, he answered: 'As many as there are fishes in the sea.' And
modern science seems determined, that the sagacious German shall not
be at fault even in this predication. Two or three fresh telescopic
comets are now usually found out every year. In 1847, 178 comets were
known to be moving in parabolic orbits, and therefore to be in some
way permanent connections of our world-system. Lalande has enumerated
700 comets, but Arago believes that not less than 7,000,000 exist,
which fall at some time or other within the reach of our sun's
influence.



THE SLEEPY LADY.


She is easy, good-natured, and compliant about everything but her
sleep. On that point she can bear no interference and no stoppages.
Unless she had it fully out every day, neither would life be worth
having for herself, nor would she allow the life of any other people
to be endurable. Sleep is her great gift; her body has been
wonderfully constituted to take a great deal of ease. Deprive her of
that, and you starve her as effectually as you famish a human being by
abstraction of food. Her personal appearance confirms her philosophy;
for you can detect not one particle of restlessness about her. All is
soft, rounded, and woolly, as if she carried an atmosphere of
deafening about with her.

It has been her habit ever since her earliest years. One of the
principal anecdotes of her girlish days now remembered in her family
is, that her mamma having sent on some exigency to rouse her, she
faintly murmured forth, 'Not for kingdoms!' then turned on the other
side, and doggedly went to sleep again. There is another story of her
having had to rise one morning at half-past seven, in order to attend
a friend as bridemaid, when, coming down stairs, and seeing it to be a
raw drizzly day, she pronounced her situation to be 'the ne plus ultra
of human misery!' She told the young bride (by way of a compliment)
that she would not have got up in _the middle of the night_ to be
present at the marriage of any other friend on earth. This phrase
might seem to most people only a pleasant hyperbole; but I am not
quite sure that it was so intended. The fact is, she has seen so
little of the world at any other hours than between noon and midnight,
that she has a very obscure sense of other periods of daily time. She
scarcely knows what morning is. Sunrise is to her as much of a
phenomenon as a total eclipse of the sun to any other person. She
cannot tell what mankind in general mean by breakfast-time, for she
has scarcely ever seen the world so early. And really half-past seven
was not very far from the middle of _her_ night.

Her husband, who is a little of a wag, compares her waking-life to the
appearance which the sun makes above the horizon on a winter day:
only, her morning is about his noon. He says, however, there appears
to be no necessary end to her sleep. It is like Decandolle's idea as
to the life of a tree: keep up the required conditions, as sap, &c.,
and the tree will never decay. So, keep up the necessary conditions
for her repose, and she continues to sleep. It is always some external
accident of a disturbing nature which gets her up. He has sometimes
proposed making an attempt so to arrange matters as to test how long
she _would_ sleep. But, unfortunately, he cannot provide against the
disturbing effect of hunger, so he fears she might not sleep above two
nights and a day at the most--a result that would not be worth the
trouble of the experiment. She takes all his jokes in good-humour, as
indeed she takes everything which does not positively interfere with
her favourite indulgence. '"Ah, little she'll reck if ye let her sleep
on," ought,' says he, 'to be her motto, being applicable to her in the
most trying crises of life, even that of the house burning about her
ears.'

He contrasts his life, which is a moderately active one, with hers. 'I
went up to my dressing-room, about nine o'clock one evening, to
prepare to go to a party, when the sound of heavy breathing from the
neighbouring apartment informed me that she had reached the land of
forgetfulness. I went out, spent a couple of hours in conversation,
had supper, set several new conundrums agoing in life, and made one or
two new friends. Then I came home, had my usual rest, rose, and set to
work in my business-room, where I drew up an important paper. Still no
appearance of the lady. I had breakfast, read the newspaper, and
played with the children. One of my new friends called, and made an
appointment. Still no appearance of my wife down stairs. At length,
about the middle of the day, when I was deep in a new piece of
business, she peeped in, with a cold nose and fresh ringlets, to ask a
cheque for her house-money--having got down stairs rather more
promptly than usual that morning, in order to go out and settle her
weekly bills. Thus I had a series of waking transactions last night,
another this morning--in fact, _a history_--while she had been lost in
the regions of oblivion. My sleep is rounded by hers, like a small
circle within a large one.'

Sometimes he speculates on the ultimate reckoning of their respective
lives. 'Mine,' says he, 'will have been so thickened up with doings of
all kinds, that it will appear long. I shall seem to have lived all my
days. I fear it must be different with yours. So much of it having
been passed in entire unconsciousness, you will look back from seventy
as most people do from five-and-thirty; and when Death presents his
dart, you will feel like one that has been defrauded of a most
precious privilege. You will go off in a state of impious discontent,
as if you had been shockingly ill-used.' Such is one of his sly plans
for rousing her to a sense of the impropriety of her ways; but all
such quips and cranks are in vain. Only don't absolutely shake her in
her bed before her thirteenth hour of rest, and you may _say_ what you
please. It cannot be implied that she is hardened, for no such quality
is compatible with her character. But she smiles every joke and every
advice aside with such an air of impassible benignity, that you see it
is of no use to think of reforming her in this grand particular.

One day not long since it rather seemed as if she was going to turn
the tables on her worthy spouse. She had a remarkable dream, in which
she thought she heard a lady sing a new song. When she awoke, she
remembered the two verses she thought she had heard, and they turned
out to be perfectly good sense and good metre, and not intolerable as
poetry. Now this was what Coleridge calls a psychological curiosity,
for the verses had of course been composed by her in her sleep. There
was more in the matter still. In her waking-life, she has a remarkably
treacherous memory for poetry, being seldom able to repeat a single
verse even of Isaac Watts without a mistake. Here, however, she had
carried two entire verses safe and sound out of her sleep into her
waking existence. It was therefore a double wonder. She has
accordingly got up a theory, that her mind is at its best in her
sleep, and is judged of at a disadvantage in its daylight moments. In
sleep lies her principal life. Waking is an inferior exceptive kind of
existence, into which she is dragged by the base exigencies of the
world. She ought to be judged of as she is in her dreams. No saying
what she goes through then. Perhaps she is the most active woman in
the world in that state. Possibly she says and does the most brilliant
things, such as nobody else could say or do in any condition. 'You say
you cannot test it, for you cannot follow me into my dream-world.
Well, but it may be as I say; and till you can prove the reverse, I
hold that I am entitled to the presumption which my dream-song
establishes in my favour.' It must be admitted there is some force in
this reasoning. All that her husband can in the meantime say on the
other side, is just this: 'Granted the activity and the brilliancy of
your sleep-life, it does wonderfully little for me or our household
concerns. Only give us an hour more of your sweet company in the
forenoon, and we shall admit you to be in your sleep as stirring and
as clever as you choose to call yourself.' This of course he says very
safely, for he well knows that no earthly consideration would induce
her to abridge her sleep even by that one hour.

At a visit I lately paid to this good couple, I found them debating
these points, the gentleman still refusing to give implicit credence
to the theory which the lady had started in her own favour. The
controversy was conducted with a great deal of good-humour, and I
could not refrain from entering into the discussion. I started,
however, a new theory, which I thought might please both parties, and
in this object I am happy to say I was successful. 'Here,' said I, 'is
a wife remarkable for putting as much good-nature into her six or
eight hours of day-life as most women put into twice the time. No one
can tell what she is in her sleep: perhaps the veriest termagant on
earth. Suppose her sleep could be abridged, might not some of this
termagantism overflow into and be diffused over her waking existence?
I can well imagine this, and you, my friend, reduced to such straits
by it that you might wish she would never waken more. Be content,
then, and rather put up with the little ills you have than fly to
others that you know not of.'



THE NEW CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.


The subject of convict discipline has for several years past excited
the attention both of legislators and philanthropists; but the
knowledge of the public concerning its details has hitherto been
exceedingly meagre. It is not intended in this article to discuss the
abstract question of the policy of transportation to the colonies, or
of convict discipline there pursued; but merely to give some account
of the system adopted at a new settlement in Australia. We will state
at once, that our official authority is a Blue Book--one of those huge
volumes printed from time to time, by order of parliament, for the
edification--or as some facetious folks say, for the mystification--of
M.Ps. Having carefully waded through its voluminous pages, we have
jotted down the passages that especially struck us, and propose to
present the pith and substance of our labour--for it is nothing
less--in a condensed and popular form.

Little more than a couple of years ago, it was resolved by government
to establish a convict settlement at Fremantle--a small town, as we
learn, of some 5000 inhabitants--in Western Australia. The first ship
arrived in Swan River on 1st June 1850, with 75 convicts; and in
October following, a second came with 100 more. Soldiers, and proper
officers to control and conduct the convicts, were on the spot; and a
tolerably suitable prison was forthwith extemporised out of a
wool-shed or warehouse. It is this kind of temporary and experimental
establishment that forms the subject of the published returns to
government, which are dated up to February 1851, and include an
exceedingly minute and clearly-stated detail of the operations and
plans adopted during the six months ending December 31, 1850. Three
hundred more convicts--principally from the Portland prison in
England--were expected in February 1851, and a grand permanent prison
was to be erected, to contain 500 cells.

The convicts at Fremantle are employed in both in-door and out-of-door
work, but principally the latter. The artisans--_tradesmen_ they are
styled in the Reports--such as blacksmiths, masons, carpenters,
tailors, bricklayers, &c., labour at their respective trades; and the
labourers, _par excellence_, toil at road-making and various other
works of public utility. The 'daily routine' is as follows:--The first
bell is rung at 5 A.M., and the prisoners rise, and neatly fold up
their bedding--they sleep in hammocks, we believe, as the documents
speak of the beds being 'hung' at night. The second bell rings at
5.15; and they are then mustered in their several wards, and paraded.
The third bell rings at 5.55, when they are minutely inspected by the
proper officers, and working-parties are detailed and marched off.
From this time to 7.55, the prison orderlies are busily engaged in
sweeping the wards, and making preparations for breakfast. At 7.55,
the bell rings, and the convicts muster, and go into breakfast. One of
the prisoners is selected to say grace, and the breakfast is eaten in
perfect silence. At 8.25, they leave the mess-room, and are then
'allowed to _smoke_ in the square before the prison door till 8.45,
when they must muster inside for prayers.' At 9 o'clock, the bell
rings for work, and the parties are inspected and marched off. At 12
o'clock, the dinner-bell rings; but parties working at a considerable
distance from the prison, are allowed to leave off work a quarter or
half an hour earlier, according to the distance they have to walk to
the prison. When grace after dinner--for which meal one hour seems to
be allowed--is said, they are again permitted to assemble outside from
1 P.M., till resuming work. At 1.55, the 'warning-bell' rings, and the
working-parties are again formed. At 2 o'clock, the bell rings, and
off they march, and continue working till 6 o'clock, when they are all
paraded, wash themselves, and muster for supper. At 6.15 rings the
supper-bell; and after supper they are 'allowed outside' from 6.45
till 7.30, when the chaplain reads prayers. At 8 o'clock, the beds are
hung, and the convicts are sent into them immediately; and the most
perfect quiet is enforced till the morning.

The 'rules and regulations' to be observed by the officers of the
establishment and the prisoners are very strict and minute; and, on
the whole, appear to be exceedingly judicious. As a fair specimen of
the sound and humane spirit that seems to pervade the regulations in
question, we will only quote No. 2 of the 'General Rules'--as
follows:--'It is the duty of all officers to treat the prisoners with
kindness and humanity, and to listen patiently to and report their
complaints or grievances, being firm at the same time in maintaining
order and discipline, and enforcing complete observance of the rules
and regulations of the establishment. The great object of reclaiming
the prisoner should always be kept in view by every officer in the
prison; and they should strive to acquire a moral influence over the
prisoners, by performing their duties conscientiously, but without
harshness. They should especially try to raise the prisoners' minds to
a proper feeling of moral obligation, by the example of their own
uniform regard to truth and integrity, even in the smallest matters.
Such conduct will, in most cases, excite the respect and confidence of
the prisoners, and will make the duties of the officers more
satisfactory to themselves and to the public.'

With respect to the degree of communication permitted between the
convicts and their friends, it is stated that a prisoner is allowed to
write, or to receive a letter, once every three months; but the
chaplain or the overseer reads all letters either received or sent;
and if the contents appear objectionable, they are withheld. We are
told in the 'Rules for Prisoners,' that no prisoner during the period
of his confinement, or employment on public works, has any claim to
remuneration of any kind, but that industry and good conduct are
rewarded by a fixed gratuity under certain regulations, depending on
the class in which the prisoner is placed; and this gratuity is
credited to him at the following general rates: 1st class, 9d. per
week; 2d class, 6d.; 3d class, 4d. If any misconduct themselves, they
forfeit all advantages, or are subject to the minor punishment of
being placed in a lower class, &c. A prisoner, by particularly good
behaviour, will be eligible to receive 3d. to 6d. per week in addition
to the above rates. The amounts thus credited 'will be advanced to
the prisoner under certain restrictions, or otherwise applied for his
benefit, as may be considered desirable.'

There are several long and extremely circumstantial tables given of
the amount of work done per day, per week, per month, &c. We gather,
that the estimated value of the work earned by all the convicts in the
six months ending 31st December 1850, was no less than L.3128, 9s. 4d.
The total number of 'non-effectives'--men unable to labour through
illness or otherwise--was 40 in the six months. The total 'effective'
workers, during the same time, was 586--artisans, 218; labourers, 368;
and this gives the average number of effectives as nearly 98 per
month; so that some idea may be formed of their individual earnings.
In the month of November, the total number of effectives was 154; and
they earned the large sum of L.823, 17s. 6d. During the following
month of December, task-work was adopted, and the effectives, 143 in
number, earned L.665, 19s. 10d. We are informed that task-work has
been contrived to allow each man to do 1-1/4 to 1-1/2-days' work per
diem, and to obtain credit for the extra amount earned. Were we,
however, to take the above figures as a criterion, we should conclude
that less, rather than more, was proportionately earned during the
month of task-work; yet this conclusion would not be fair, for
doubtless many modifying circumstances require to be taken into
consideration--such as the state of the weather, the number of
artisans as compared with the labourers, &c.; besides which, it must
be borne in mind, that although task-work has been specially designed
to benefit the convicts themselves, yet, while some would work with a
will, others, and perhaps many, would prefer unremunerative idleness.

To every breach of discipline, certain punishments are allotted; some,
indeed, appear very severe; and for many misdemeanours, corporal
punishment is not merely held out _in terrorem_, but inflicted.
Attempts at escape are liable to be punished by labour in chains, or
flogging up to 100 lashes, or to a renewed sentence of transportation;
and the recaptured convict has to work out the expenses of his
capture, and the reward paid for the same. In the list of offences and
punishments for the month of December, we see some very curious items;
and, not knowing anything of the peculiar circumstances of each case,
they are apt to strike one as being somewhat arbitrary. For instance,
'for refusing to work,' a man had 'bread and water for three days;' a
second, 'for insubordinate conduct'--much the same thing, we should
suppose, as 'refusing to work'--had the very severe punishment of
'bread and water, and twenty-eight days' solitary confinement;' a
third, for 'talking to a female,' was 'admonished;' a fourth, for
being 'drunk at work,' had 'bread and water for three days, and
fourteen days' solitary confinement;' a fifth, 'for threatening
language,' had his '_tobacco stopped for three days_!' On the subject
of the 'pernicious Indian weed,' there is the following passage in the
Report of the comptroller-general of Fremantle:--'The issue, under his
Excellency's sanction, of a small allowance of tobacco, has been
appreciated as a very great boon, and has prevented many
irregularities. It also furnishes an excellent means of punishment for
minor offences--that is, by its stoppage.' We can well believe this.
We know positively that prisoners will undergo any risk to get even a
morsel of tobacco, and would gladly sacrifice a day's food for it. It
is almost incredible what an intense longing for tobacco arises in the
minds of those forcibly restrained from the indulgence.

Several 'tickets-of-leave' had already been granted at Fremantle; and
on this subject we are presented with a mass of remarkable and
instructive information. The reader is probably aware, that convicts
in prison, before quitting England, are subjected to a term of hard
labour--proportionate in duration to the length of their sentences of
transportation--and to a further term of hard labour on arriving in
Australia. When the latter term has expired, if the prisoner has
conducted himself well, he is presented with a ticket-of-leave, which
confines him to a certain district, where he may engage to labour for
his own benefit under an employer. He does this, however, under very
strict rules, and the least transgression is punished severely. If,
for instance, he leaves the district, he is liable to be apprehended,
and summarily convicted by a magistrate, who may sentence him to
labour in irons; or he may forfeit his ticket-of-leave, and relapse
into his former situation as a convict. Or if he at all misconducts
himself, or is insubordinate, his employer may carry him before a
magistrate, and have him corporally punished. A list is given of the
convicts who obtained tickets-of-leave at Fremantle, with their
trades, and the names of their employers, and the wages they were to
receive. A groom received L.12 per annum; a carpenter, L.14; a
labourer, L.1 per month; a blacksmith, L.1, 8s. per month; a mason,
L.1, 10s. per month; and a brickmaker, L.2, 10s. per month. Each
ticket-holder must pay to the comptroller-general the sum of L.15, for
the expenses of his passage out to the colony. No ticket-holder,
unless under very special circumstances, gets a 'conditional pardon'
till one-half of his sentence, from date of conviction, is expired;
nor will he receive a conditional pardon till the whole of the L.15 is
paid. 'Wives and families of well-conducted ticket-of-leave men will
be sent out to them, when one-half the cost of so doing has been paid,
either by themselves, their friends, or their parishes in the United
Kingdom; or the expenses of their passage may be assumed as a debt by
the ticket-of-leave holder, to be repaid (under a bond) by the same
means as the expenses of his own passage.' This is paid by the
employer handing over to the comptroller-general annually any sum not
exceeding one-third of the ticket-holder's salary, and not above L.5 a
year in any case, unless at the man's own desire. On the subject of
this forced payment of L.15 to government, the comptroller-general in
his Report animadverts strongly. He says that ticket-men will try
every trick to evade it; and that many of them openly say, that the
situation of a well-conducted ticket-holder is such, as to make them
think it not worth while paying so much as L.15 for a conditional
pardon. The employers, however, he hints, object to pay ticket-men at
all; seeming to think government ought to assign them gratuitously, as
was done, we believe, under the old system.

The surgeon states in his report, that the food supplied at the
establishment is 'wholesome, and ample;' and the health of the
convicts seems very good, for only two had died up to that time, and
both of these were landed in a very debilitated condition. He states
the number of convicts in January 1851 at 140.

The chaplain's report is interesting and encouraging. He says, that
'the present discipline is well calculated to maintain the habits of
industry, order, and cleanliness acquired in preceding prisons;' and
he speaks well of the general attention of the convicts to religious
exercises. Above all, he strongly and wisely advocates the formation
of a library for their use; and hints that the books selected should
not merely be religious, but 'entertaining and instructive'--such as
history, biography, voyages and travels, scientific books with
illustrations, &c. One exceedingly interesting fact mentioned is, that
certain of the best educated and most intelligent convicts have been
permitted to deliver _lectures_ to their fellow-prisoners on the
subjects with which they were best conversant, and with the happiest
effects. Thus, a man who had been employed in a large brewery,
described the whole 'mystery' in a very able manner; a second, who was
by trade a French polisher, did the same; and a third, who had been a
sailor, gave two lectures on the art of navigation, and illustrated
them in capital style with diagrams drawn on a black-board. We cannot
but think that the beneficial tendency of these novel prison
recreations will be very great.

The Report of the comptroller-general himself is, on the whole,
decidedly cheering; and he says of the convicts, that, 'taken as a
body, I am inclined to believe they are anxious to do well, and by
honest and steady conduct, to regain here that position they have
forfeited in their native land.' When inquiring of government whether
the same scale is to be adopted at Fremantle as at Van Diemen's Land,
he says, that at the latter place the cost of officers--such as
magistrates, superintendents, overseers, storekeepers, religious
instructors, medical men, &c.--allowed for each 300 convicts, amounts
to L.1337, 3s. 6d. per annum, or L.4, 9s. 2d. for each convict. This
seems a large sum, and does not appear to include the heavy additional
cost of warders and other prison-officers.

The necessary brevity of this article precludes any allusion to a
great variety of curious and instructive details of the Fremantle
'establishment,' as it is called; but if what we have already said
interests the reader, and he requires to know more, we can confidently
refer him to the bulky Blue Book alluded to, with an assurance that he
will there find most ample and authentic information.



THE TRIAL OF ELIZABETH CANNING.


In the year 1753, London was so deeply convulsed with a great question
at issue in the criminal courts, that the peace of the city was
seriously threatened. From the highest to the lowest grades, society
was divided into two parties on this question; and it was impossible
to speak of it at a dinner-table or in a street assemblage without
exciting a dangerous quarrel. This dispute was an extravagant
illustration of English zeal for justice and fair play. The real
question lay between an old gipsy woman and a young servant-girl. The
question at issue was--Had the gipsy robbed and forcibly confined
Elizabeth Canning, or had Elizabeth Canning falsely accused the gipsy
of these outrages? By the force of incidental circumstances, the
question came to be a really important one, in which the statesmen and
jurists of the age took a lively interest. In fact, it connected
itself with the efficacy of the great judicial institutions of the
land, and their capacity to do justice and protect innocence. Hence
the several trials and inquiries occupy as much space in the _State
Trials_ as three or four modern novels. In giving our readers an
outline of the events so recorded, only the more prominent and marked
features of them can of course find room.

Elizabeth Canning, a young woman between eighteen and nineteen years
of age, had borne an unexceptionable character, and was a domestic
servant in the house of a gentleman living in Aldermanbury, named
Edward Lyon. On the 1st of January 1753, she obtained liberty to pay a
visit to her uncle, who lived at Saltpetre Bank. As she did not return
at the specified time, Mr Lyon's family made inquiry of her mother
about her, and learned that she had not made her appearance among her
other relations after the visit to her uncle. Days and weeks passed,
in which every inquiry was unavailingly made after her, and her mother
suffered intense anxiety. Public notice had been taken of the mystery;
it was commented on in the newspapers, and much talked of. At length,
at the end of January, Elizabeth entered her mother's house in a
wretched condition--emaciated and exhausted, and with scarcely a
sufficiency of clothes on her person for mere decorum. She was, of
course, asked eagerly to give an account of her misfortunes. Her
narrative by degrees resolved itself into this shape: She set out on
her visit at eleven o'clock in the day, and stayed with her uncle till
nine o'clock in the evening. Her uncle and aunt accompanied her as far
as Aldgate. Then setting off alone, as she crossed Moorfields, and
passed the back of Bethlehem Hospital, two stout men seized her. 'They
said nothing to me,' she said, 'at first, but took half a guinea, in a
little box, out of my pocket, and three shillings that were loose.
They took my gown, apron, and hat, and folded them up, and put them
into a greatcoat pocket. I screamed out; then the man who took my gown
put a handkerchief or some such thing in my mouth.' They then tied her
hands behind her, swore savagely at her, and dragged her along with
them. She now, according to her own account, swooned, and on
recovering from her fit, she felt herself still in their hands; they
were swearing, and calling on her to move on. Partly insensible, she
was conveyed for a considerable distance, but could not say whether
she was dragged or carried. When she found herself at rest,
it was daylight in the morning. She remembered being in a
disreputable-looking house, in the presence of a woman, who said if
she would accompany her, she should have fine clothes. Elizabeth
refused, and the woman taking a knife from a dresser, cut open her
stays, and removed them. The woman and the other people present then
hustled her up stairs into a wretched garret, and locked the door. She
found here a miserable straw-bed, a large black pitcher nearly full of
water, and twenty-four pieces of bread, seeming as if a quartern-loaf
had been cut in so many pieces. Her story went on to say, that she
remained in this place for four weeks, eating so much of the bread and
drinking a little water daily, till both were exhausted. She then
succeeded in making her escape, by removing a board which was nailed
across a window. 'First,' she said, 'I got my head out, and kept fast
hold of the wall, and got my body out; after that, I turned myself
round, and jumped into a little narrow place by a lane, with a field
beside it. Having nothing on but 'an old sort of a bedgown and a
handkerchief, that were in this hay-loft, and lay in a grate in the
chimney,' she managed to travel twelve miles through an unknown
country to her mother's house, not daring, as she said, to call at any
place by the way, lest she should again fall into the hands of her
persecutors.

If Elizabeth's absence created excitement, her reappearance in the
plight she was in, and with such a story to tell, increased it
tenfold. She was an attractive-looking girl; and seeing the sympathy
she excited, had no objection to assent to the theory formed by her
friends, that the people in whose hands she had fallen had the basest
designs upon her; that they had resolved to conquer her virtue by
imprisonment and starvation; and that she had magnanimously and
patiently resisted all their efforts. The story was hawked about
everywhere. It was spoken of in every tavern and at every
dinner-table. The indignation of many respectable citizens was roused.
They were parents, and had daughters of their own, who might be made
the victims of the diabolical crew from which this poor girl had
escaped. Many of them resolved to rally round her--avenge her wrongs,
and punish the perpetrators. Elizabeth found herself one of the most
important people in London. She received many presents, and
considerable funds were raised to prosecute the inquiry. In these
circumstances, she was bound of course to assist her friends by
remembering every little incident that could lead them to the place of
her sufferings. She believed that it must have been on the Hertford
road, for in looking from the window, she had caught sight of a coach
on that road with which she was familiar, as a former mistress had
been accustomed to travel in it. This circumstance, with the distance
travelled by the girl, afforded her champions a clue, and they
concentrated their researches at Enfield Wash. There they found a
questionable-looking lodging-house kept by a family of the name of
Wells, which seemed to answer to Elizabeth's description. It had a
garret with an old straw-bed, and a black pitcher was found in the
house.

Elizabeth was taken to examine this house in a sort of triumphal
procession. Her friends went on horseback, making a complete
cavalcade; she and her mother travelled in a coach. As many as could
find room seem to have simultaneously rushed into the squalid
lodging-house, and the natural astonishment and confusion of its
inmates on such an invasion were at once assigned as the symptoms of
conscious guilt. Elizabeth seemed to be at first somewhat confused and
undecided; these symptoms were attributed to the excitement of the
moment on recollection of the horrors she had endured, and to a
feeling of insecurity. She was told to take courage; she was among her
friends, who would support her cause; and she at last said decidedly,
that she was in the house where she had been imprisoned. A gipsy woman
of very remarkable appearance was present. One of the witnesses
recognised her, from her likeness to the portraits of Mother Shipton
the sorceress. She sat bending over the fire smoking a pipe, and
exhibiting through the hubbub around the imperturbable calmness
peculiar to her race. Elizabeth immediately pointed to her, and said
she was the woman who had cut her stays, and helped to put her in her
prison-room. Even this did not disturb the stolid indifference of the
old woman, who was paying no attention to what the people said. When,
however, her daughter stepped up and said: 'Good mother, this young
woman says you robbed her,' she started to her feet, turned on the
group her remarkable face, and said: 'I rob you! take care what you
say. If you have once seen my face, you cannot mistake it, for God
never made such another.' When told of the day of the robbery, she
gave a wild laugh, and said she was then above a hundred miles off in
Dorsetshire. This woman was named Squires. Her son, George Squires,
was present. Elizabeth did not seem completely to remember him at
first, but she in the end maintained him to be one of the ruffians who
had attacked her in Moorfields. Her followers were now eminently
satisfied. All the persons in the house were seized, and immediately
committed for examination. The strange, wild aspect of the gipsy seems
to have added an element to the horrors of the affair; and in the
afternoon, when two of Elizabeth's friends were discussing the whole
matter over a steak in the Three Crowns at Newington, one of them said
to the other: 'Mr Lyon, I hope God Almighty will destroy the model
that he made that face by, and never make another like it.' It was
found that Mrs Wells, who kept the lodging-house, belonged to a
disreputable family, and she admitted that her husband had been
hanged. If Elizabeth had given a false tale to hide the questionable
causes of her absenting herself, she had probably found that it took a
much more serious turn than she intended, and she must now make up her
mind to recant her tale or go through with it. She resolved on the
latter course, to which she was probably tempted by having all London
to back her. She could not well have carried on the charge alone, but
the popularity of her cause brought her unexpected aid. A woman named
Virtue Hall, who lived in Mrs Wells's lodging-house, thought it would
be a good speculation to be partner with Elizabeth Canning, and she
gave testimony which corroborated the whole story.

On the 21st of February, Mary Squires and Susannah Wells were brought
to trial for a capital offence. The evidence adduced against them was
the story just told. When Mrs Squires was called on for her defence,
she gave a succinct account of how she had from day to day gone from
one distant place to another during the time when Elizabeth said she
was in confinement. Two or three witnesses came forward somewhat
timidly to corroborate her statement; and it is a melancholy fact,
that others would have appeared and offered convincing testimony of
the innocence of the accused, but were intimidated by the ferocious
aspect of the London populace from venturing to give their evidence.
That it was not very safe to contradict the popular idol, Elizabeth
Canning, was indeed experienced in a very unpleasant way by the
witnesses John Gibbons, William Clarke, and Thomas Greville, who came
forward in favour of Squires. Money was collected to prosecute them
for perjury. Dreading the strength of the popular current against
them, they had to incur great expense in preparation for their
defence. Before the day of trial, however, some of Canning's champions
began to feel a misgiving, and no prosecutor appeared. The counsel for
the accused complained bitterly of the hardship of their position.
They had incurred great expense. They felt that it was necessary for
the complete removal of the stain of perjury thrown on their
character, that there should be a trial. They said they had witnesses
'ready to give their testimony with such clear, ample, convincing
circumstances, as would demand universal assent, and fully prove the
innocence of the three defendants, and the falsity of Elizabeth
Canning's story in every particular;' whereas, without a trial, all
would be virtually lost to the accused, who, instead of obtaining a
triumphant acquittal, might be suspected of having agreed to some
dubious compromise.

Mrs Squires was at length convicted, and had judgment of death. But
Sir Crisp Gascoyne, the lord mayor of London, who was nominally at the
head of the commission for trying Squires, believed that she was the
victim of falsehood and public prejudice. He resolved to subject the
whole question to a searching investigation, and to obviate, if
possible, the scandal to British institutions, of perpetrating a
judicial murder, even though the victim should be among the most
obscure of the inhabitants of the realm. In the first place, an
inquiry was instituted by the law-officers of the crown, the result of
which was, that the woman Squires received a royal pardon. The lord
mayor, however, having satisfied himself that this poor woman had but
narrowly escaped death from the perfidious falsehood of Elizabeth
Canning, aided by an outbreak of popular zeal, was not content with
the gipsy woman's escape, but thought that an example should be made
of her persecutor. Accordingly, although he was met with much obloquy,
both verbal and written--for controversial pamphlets were published
against him as an enemy of Elizabeth Canning--he resolved to bring
this popular idol to justice.

On the 29th of April 1754, she was brought to trial for wilful and
corrupt perjury. Her trial lasted to the 13th of May. It is one of the
longest in the collection called the _State Trials_, and is a more
full and elaborate inquiry than the trial of Charles I. The case made
out was complete and crushing, and the perfect clearness with which
the whole truth connected with the movements from day to day, and from
hour to hour, of people in the humblest rank was laid open, shews the
great capabilities of our public jury-system for getting at the truth.
One part of the case was, the absurdity of Elizabeth Canning's story,
and its inconsistency, in minute particulars, with itself and with the
concomitant facts. When her first description of the room, in which,
she said, she was shut up, was compared with the full survey of it
afterwards undertaken, important and fatal discrepancies were proved.
She professed to have been unable to see anything going on in the
house from her place of confinement, but in the room at Enfield Wash
there was a large hole through the floor for a jack-rope, which gave a
full view of the kitchen, where the inmates of the house chiefly
resorted. She professed to describe every article in the room she was
confined in, but she had said nothing of a very remarkable chest of
drawers found in that which she identified as the same. That this
piece of furniture had not been recently placed there was made
evident, by the damp dust gluing it to the wall, and the host of
spiders which ran from their webs when it was removed. She had escaped
by stepping on a penthouse, but there was none against the garret of
Mrs Wells's house; the windows were high, and she could not have
leaped to the ground without severe injury. She stated that no one had
entered the room during the four weeks of her imprisonment, but it was
shewn that, during the period, a lodger had held an animated
conversation from one of the windows of the identical garret with
somebody occupied in lopping wood outside. Nay, a person had seen a
poor woman, with the odd name of Natis, in bed in that very room. His
reason for entering it was a curious one, which has almost a
historical bearing. He went to try the ironwork of a sign which had
once hung in front of the house, and lay in the garret. The sign had
been taken down when the Jacobite army penetrated into England in the
Rebellion of 1745. Probably it had been of a character likely to be
offensive to the Jacobites, and its removal is a little incident,
shewing how greatly the country apprehended a revolution in favour of
the Stuarts.

These discrepancies were, however, far from being the most remarkable
part of the evidence. Not content with shewing that Elizabeth Canning
had told falsehoods, the prosecutor set to the laborious task of
proving where the gipsy woman had been, along with her son and
daughter, charged as her accomplices, during the time embraced by the
mere active part of Elizabeth's narrative. From the vagrant habits of
the race, evidence to the most minute particulars had thus to be
collected over a large range of country; and the precision with which
the statements of a multitude of people--of different ranks and
pursuits, and quite unknown to each other, as well as to the person
they spoke of--are fitted to each other, is very striking and
interesting. The most trifling and unconsequential-looking facts tell
with wonderful precision on the result. Thus a lodging-house keeper
remembered the woman Squires being in her house on a certain day, and
she made it sure by an entry in an account-book, as to which she
remembered that she had consulted the almanac that she might put down
the right day. The day of the woman's presence in another place was
identical with the presence of an Excise surveyor, and the statements
of the witnesses were tested by the Excise entry-books. The position
of the wanderers was in another instance connected with the posting of
a letter, and the post-office clerks bore testimony to the fact, that
from the marks on the letter it must have been posted on that day. It
was, as we have seen, on the 1st of January that Elizabeth Canning
said she was seized. The journey of the gipsy family is traced from
day to day through distant parts of England, from the preceding
December down to the 24th of January, which was the day of their
arrival at Enfield Wash. Thus fortified by counteracting facts of an
unquestionable nature, the counsel for the prosecution felt himself in
a position to turn the whole story into ridicule, and shew the innate
absurdity of what all London had so resolutely believed.

He proceeded in this strain: 'Was it not strange that Canning should
subsist so long on so small a quantity of bread and water--four weeks,
wanting only a few hours? Strange that she should husband her store so
well as to have some of her bread left, according to her first
account, till the Wednesday; according to the last, till the Friday
before she made her escape; and that she should save some of her
miraculous pitcher till the last day? Was the twenty-fourth part of a
sixpenny loaf a day sufficient to satisfy her hunger? If not, why
should she defer the immediate gratification of her appetite in order
to make provision for a precarious, uncertain futurity? Shall we
suppose some revelation from above in favour of one of the faithful?
Perhaps an angel from heaven appeared to this mirror of modern virtue,
and informed her, that if she eat more than one piece of bread a day,
her small pittance would not last her till the time she was to make
her escape. Her mother, we know, is a very enthusiastical woman--a
consulter of conjurors, a dreamer of dreams; perhaps the daughter
dreamed also what was to happen, and so, in obedience to her vision,
would not eat when she was hungry, nor drink when she was thirsty.
However that was, I would risk the event of the prosecution on this
single circumstance, that, without the interposition of some
preternatural cause, this conduct of the prisoner's must appear to
exceed all bounds of human probability.'

Notwithstanding the conclusive exposure of her criminality, Elizabeth
Canning was not entirely deserted by her partisans to the last. Two of
the jury had difficulty in reconciling themselves to the verdict of
guilty, suggesting that her story might be substantially correct,
though undoubtedly she had made a mistake about the persons by whom
she was injured. There was a technical imperfection in the verdict,
and her friends strove to the utmost to take advantage of it. When it
was overruled, and a verdict of guilty was recorded, she pleaded for
mercy, saying that she was more unfortunate than wicked; that
self-preservation had been her sole object; and that she did not wish
to take the gipsy's life. The punishment to be inflicted on her was a
matter of serious deliberation, as many of the common people were
still so unconvinced of her wickedness, that an attempt to break the
jail in which she was imprisoned might be feared, and as at that time
the transportation system had not been established. It was not,
however, unusual to send criminals, by their own consent, to the
plantations, and the court gladly acceded to a desire by her
relations, that she should be banished to New England.



THE ISLAND OF ISLAY.


There is, perhaps, no country in Europe which possesses so great a
variety of territory and social condition as our own. Between the
plains of Cambridgeshire and the wilds of Sutherland--between the
toiling, densely-packed multitudes of Lancashire and the idle,
scattered cotters of the Hebrides, how vast a difference! The Land we
Live in, as Charles Knight has called it, in a very delightful
descriptive book, is a much more interesting study to its own people
than is generally supposed; and we somewhat wonder that comparatively
so few of our tourists go in search of what is picturesque, romantic,
and novel within our own seas. These ideas arise in our mind in
perusing a few pages of the new edition of the _Guide to the Highlands
and Islands of Scotland_,[2] by the Messrs Anderson of Inverness. In
this book we have the benefit of remarkable fulness of knowledge on
the part of the authors, and the accuracy of their statements is only
rivalled by their judicious brevity. The account of some of the more
out-of-the-way parts of the country brings before us not merely
physical conditions highly peculiar, but, as it were, a totally
peculiar set of historical associations. As an example, take a few
swatches of the Island of Islay.

It is about thirty miles long by twenty-four in breadth, composed
chiefly of elevated, but not Alpine ground, much of it moorish and
bleak, but a great and constantly increasing space cultivated and
sheltered. The finest island in the Hebrides, it belonged almost
wholly to one proprietor, whose dignity of course was great. Within
the last few years, he came to greet the Queen at Inverary, with a
gallant following of men clothed in the Highland garb at his own
expense. The island is now, however, in the hands of trustees, for the
benefit of creditors, whose claims amount to upwards of L.700,000.
There are lead-mines on the island, now unwrought, but from which it
is understood silver had been derived, wherewith some of the family
plate of the proprietor was formed. Whisky is distilled to such an
amount, as to return L.30,000 per annum of revenue to the government.
The Gaelic-speaking people, the fine shooting-grounds, the romantic
cliffs and caves, the lonely moors and lochs of this island,
altogether give it a degree of romantic interest calculated strongly
to attract the regard of the intelligent stranger.

To pursue the narration of Messrs Anderson--'Islay is not a little
interesting from the historical associations connected with the
remains of antiquity which it presents, in the ruins of its old
castles, forts, and chapels. It was a chief place of residence of the
celebrated lords, or rather kings, of the Isles, and afterwards of a
near and powerful branch of the family of the great Macdonald. The
original seat of the Scottish monarchy was Cantyre, and the capital is
supposed to have been in the immediate vicinity of the site of
Campbelltown. In the ninth century, it was removed to Forteviot, near
the east end of Strathearn, in Perthshire. Shortly afterwards, the
Western Isles and coasts, which had then become more exposed to the
hostile incursions of the Scandinavian Vikingr, were completely
reduced under the sway of Harold Harfager, of Denmark. Harold
established a viceroy in the Isle of Man. In the beginning of the
twelfth century, Somerled, a powerful chieftain of Cantyre, married
Effrica, a daughter of Olaus or Olave, the swarthy viceroy or king of
Man, a descendant of Harold Harfager, and assumed the independent
sovereignty of Cantyre; to which he added, by conquest, Argyle and
Lorn, with several islands contiguous thereto and to Cantyre. Somerled
was slain in 1164, in an engagement with Malcolm IV. in Renfrewshire.
His possessions on the mainland, excepting Cantyre, were bestowed on
his younger son Dugal, from whom sprung the Macdougals of Lorn, who
are to this day lineally represented by the family of Dunolly; while
the islands and Cantyre descended to Reginald, his elder son. For more
than three centuries, Somerled's descendants held these possessions,
at times as independent princes, and at others as tributaries of
Norway, Scotland, and even of England. In the sixteenth century they
continued still troublesome, but not so formidable to the royal
authority. After the battle of the Largs in 1263, in which Haco of
Norway was defeated, the pretensions of that kingdom were resigned to
the Scottish monarchs, for payment of a subsidy of 100 merks. Angus
Og, fifth in descent from Somerled, entertained Robert Bruce in his
flight to Ireland in his castle of Dunaverty, near the Mull of
Cantyre, and afterwards at Dunnavinhaig, in Isla, and fought under his
banner at Bannockburn. Bruce conferred on the Macdonalds the
distinction of holding the post of honour on the right in battle--the
withholding of which at Culloden occasioned a degree of disaffection
on their part, in that dying struggle of the Stuart dynasty. This
Angus's son, John, called by the Dean of the Isles "the good John of
Isla," had by Amy, great-granddaughter of Roderick, son of Reginald,
king of Man, three sons--John, Ronald, and Godfrey; and by subsequent
marriage with Margaret, daughter of Robert Stuart, afterwards Robert
II. of Scotland, other three sons--Donald of the Isles, John Mor the
Tainnister, and Alexander Carrach. It is subject of dispute whether
the first family were lawful issue or illegitimate, or had merely been
set aside, for they were not called to the chief succession, as a
stipulation of the connection with the royal family, to whom the
others were particularly obnoxious; or, as has been conjectured, from
the relationship of the parents being thought too much within the
forbidden degrees. The power of John seems to have been singularly
great. By successive grants of Robert Bruce to his father, and of
David II., Baliol, and Robert II., to himself, he appears to have been
in possession or superior of almost the whole western coasts and
islands....

'The inordinate power of these island princes was gradually broken
down by the Scottish monarchs in the course of the fifteenth and early
part of the sixteenth century. On the death of John, Lord of the Isles
and Earl of Ross, grandson of Donald, Hugh of Sleat, John's nearest
brother and his descendants became rightful representatives of the
family, and so continue. Claim to the title of Lord of the Isles was
made by Donald, great-grandson of Hugh of Sleat; but James V. refused
to restore the title, deeming its suppression advisable for the peace
of the country.'

At the close of the sixteenth century, when Bacon was writing his
_Essays_, and Shakspeare his _Hamlet_, this remote part of the country
was the scene of bloody feuds between semi-barbarous chieftains. A
battle, with from one to two thousand men on each side, took place in
Islay in 1598. The power of the Islay Macdonalds ultimately passed
into the hands of the Campbells, who have since been the ascendant
family in these insular regions.

'The remains of the strongholds of the Macdonalds in Islay are the
following:--In Loch Finlagan, a lake about three miles in
circumference, three miles from Port Askaig, and a mile off the road
to Loch-in-Daal, on the right hand, on an islet, are the ruins of
their principal castle or palace and chapel; and on an adjoining
island the Macdonald council held their meetings. There are traces of
a pier, and of the habitations of the guards on the shore. A large
stone was, till no very distant period, to be seen, on which Macdonald
stood, when crowned, by the Bishop of Argyle, King of the Isles. On an
island, in a similar lake, Loch Guirm, to the west of Loch-in-Daal,
are the remains of a strong square fort, with round corner towers; and
towards the head of Loch-in-Daal, on the same side, are vestiges of
another dwelling and pier.

    'Where are thy pristine glories, Finlagan?
      The voice of mirth has ceased to ring thy walls,
    Where Celtic lords and their fair ladies sang
      Their songs of joy in Great Macdonald's halls.
    And where true knights, the flower of chivalry,
    Oft met their chiefs in scenes of revelry--
      All, all are gone, and left thee to repose,
      Since a new race and measures new arose.

'The Macdonalds had a body-guard of 500 men, of whose quarters there
are marks still to be seen on the banks of the loch. For their
personal services they had lands, the produce of which fed and clothed
them. They were formed into two divisions. The first was called
Ceatharnaich, and composed of the very tallest and strongest of the
islanders. Of these, sixteen, called Buannachan, constantly attended
their lord wheresoever he went, even in his rural walks; and one of
them, denominated "Gille 'shiabadh dealt," headed the party. This
piece of honourable distinction was conferred upon him on account of
his feet being of such size and form as, in his progress, to cover the
greatest extent of ground, and to shake the dew from the grass
preparatory to its being trodden by his master. These Buannachan
enjoyed certain privileges, which rendered them particularly obnoxious
to their countrymen. The last gang of them was destroyed in the
following manner by one Macphail in the Rinns:--Seeing Macdonald and
his men coming, he set about splitting the trunk of a tree, in which
he had partly succeeded by the time they had reached. He requested the
visitors to lend a hand. So, eight on each side, they took hold of the
partially severed splits; on doing which, Macphail removed the wedges
which had kept open the slit, which now closed on their fingers,
holding them hard and fast in the rustic man-trap. Macphail and his
three sons equipped themselves from the armour of their captives,
compelled them to eat a lusty dinner, and then beheaded them, leaving
their master to return in safety. Macphail and his sons took shelter
in Ireland. The other division of these 500 were called
Gillean-glasa, and their post was within the outer walls of their
fastnesses. These forts were so constructed that the Gillean-glasa
might fight in the outer breach, whilst their lords, together with
their guests, were enjoying themselves in security within the walls,
and especially within the impenetrable fortifications of Finlagan.

'On Freuch Isle, in the Sound, are the ruins of Claig Castle--a square
tower, defended by a deep ditch, which at once served as a prison and
a protection to the passage. At Laggavoulin Bay, an inlet on the east
coast, and on the opposite side to the village, on a large peninsular
rock, stands part of the walls of a round substantial stone burgh or
tower, protected on the land side by a thick earthen mound. It is
called Dun Naomhaig, or Dunnivaig (such is Gaelic orthography.) There
are ruins of several houses beyond the mound, separated from the main
building by a strong wall. This may have been a Danish structure,
subsequently used by the Macdonalds, and it was one of their strongest
naval stations. There are remains of several such strongholds in the
same quarter. The ruins of one are to be seen on an inland hill, Dun
Borreraig, with walls twelve feet thick, and fifty-two feet in
diameter inside, and having a stone seat two feet high round the area.
As usual, there is a gallery in the midst of the wall. Another had
occupied the summit of Dun Aidh, a large, high, and almost
inaccessible rock near the Mull. Between Loch Guirm and Saneg, and
south of Loch Gruinart, at Dun Bheolain (Vollan), there are a series
of rocks, projecting one behind another into the sea, with precipitous
seaward fronts, and defended on the land side by cross dikes; and in
the neighbourhood numerous small pits in the earth, of a size to admit
of a single person seated. These are covered by flat stones, which
were concealed by sods.

'There are also several ruins of chapels and places of worship in
Islay, as in many other islands. The names of fourteen founded by the
Lords of the Isles might be enumerated. Indeed, most of the names,
especially of parishes of the west coast, have some old ecclesiastical
allusion. In the ancient burying-ground of Kildalton, a few miles
south-west of the entrance of the Sound, are two large, but
clumsily-sculptured stone-crosses. In this quarter, near the Bay of
Knock, distinguished by a high sugar-loaf-shaped hill, are two large
upright flagstones, called the two stones of Islay, reputed to mark
the burying-place of Yula, a Danish princess, who gives the island its
name. In the church-yard of Killarrow, near Bowmore, there was a
prostrate column, rudely sculptured; and, among others, two
grave-stones, one with the figure of a warrior, habited in a sort of
tunic reaching to the knees, and a conical head-dress. His hand holds
a sword, and by his side is a dirk. The decoration of the other is a
large sword, surrounded by a wreath of leaves; and at one end the
figures of three animals. This column has been removed from its
resting-place, and set up in the centre of a battery erected near
Islay House some years ago. Monumental stones, as well as cairns and
barrows, occur elsewhere; and there is said to be a specimen of a
circular mound, with successive terraces, resembling the tynewalds, or
judgment-seats, of the Isle of Man, and almost unique in the Western
Islands. Stone and brass hatchet-shaped weapons or celts, elf-shots or
flint arrow-heads, and brass fibulæ, have been frequently dug up.'


FOOTNOTES:

[2] Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. Pp. 808.



THE APPLE OF THE DEAD SEA.


We made a somewhat singular discovery when travelling among the
mountains to the east of the Dead Sea, where the ruins of Ammon Jerash
and Ajoloun well repay the labour and fatigue encountered in visiting
them. It was a remarkably hot and sultry day. We were scrambling up
the mountain through a thick jungle of bushes and low trees, which
rises above the east shore of the Dead Sea, when I saw before me a
fine plum-tree, loaded with fresh blooming plums. I cried out to my
fellow-traveller: 'Now, then, who will arrive first at the plum-tree?'
and as he caught a glimpse of so refreshing an object, we both pressed
our horses into a gallop, to see which would get the first plum from
the branches. We both arrived at the same moment; and, each snatching
at a fine ripe plum, put it at once into our mouths, when, on biting
it, instead of the cool, delicious juicy fruit which we expected, our
mouths were filled with a dry bitter dust, and we sat under the tree
upon our horses, sputtering, and hemming, and doing all we could to be
relieved of the nauseous taste of this strange fruit. We then
perceived, and to my great delight, that we had discovered the famous
apple of the Dead Sea, the existence of which has been doubted and
canvassed since the days of Strabo and Pliny, who first described it.
Many travellers have given descriptions of other vegetable productions
which bear analogy to the one described by Pliny; but, up to this
time, no one had met with the thing itself, either upon the spot
mentioned by the ancient authors or elsewhere.--_Curzon's Visits to
Monasteries in the Levant._



INVOCATION.


    Creator of the universal heart
      In nature's bosom beating!
    Life of all forms, which are but as a part
      Of Thee, thy life repeating!
    Soul of the earth, thy sanctity impart
      Where human souls are meeting!

    Bright as the first faint beam in mercy shewn
      Unto the barren-sighted,
    Where, on the yet unbroken darkness thrown,
      A sunny ray hath lighted,
    The glory of thy presence streameth down
      On us, the world-benighted.

    To us the shadow of the earth is given,
      And ours the lower cloud;
    But though along its pathways tempest-driven,
      Our hearts shall not be bowed,
    While yet our eyes unto the stars of heaven
      We lift, and pray aloud!

    Not with the prayers of long ago we pray,
      With red raised hand beseeching--
    Not with the war-voice of our elder clay,
      With the mammoth's bones now bleaching--
    Not for the mortal victories of a day,
      But--for the Spirit's teaching!

    Be Words of Light alone our javelins hurled,
      While Truth wings every dart:
    Oh, welcome, then, the legions of a world!--
      But ours no warrior's part;
    The ensigns we would bear are passions furled--
      Love, and a child's young heart!

                                             O.



ART-EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.


Let us here mention, that we have found the children of the sovereign
of Great Britain at nine in the morning at the Museum of Practical
Art; and on another occasion, at the same hour, amidst the Elgin
marbles--not the only wise hint to the mothers of England to be found
in the highest place. Accustom your children to find beauty in
goodness, and goodness in beauty.--_The Builder._

       *       *       *       *       *

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Dublin.--Advertisements for Monthly Parts are requested to be sent to
MAXWELL & CO., 31 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, London, to whom all
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