'I tell you the truth. But listen to what followed. The captain of the troop told him he was mad, and asked him if he did not know that the pasha's own son would not live to finish such a sentence as that in his presence. Yauco said that he knew it; but he thought it better that one should die, than that hundreds of aged and infirm should perish in the flames; better that he should be tortured, than that so many poor creatures should become miserable slaves. Well, the other laughed at him, and the expedition took place; but, friend, they 'talk of another such very speedily. Nothing would be easier for you than to induce the pasha to order his favourite Yauco to take the command; Yauco would refuse; and then'

'May you live for ever!' exclaimed his companion, starting up in the highest glee. It is a brave plot, good doctor, and if it succeeds, you shall have a rare bag of piastres!'

'I shall have my bag of piastres!' replied the other in a confident tone, and they separated to organise their iniquitous project.

lities as though he had known him all his life; protested that such was his marvellous probity, that were the pasha to place him in guard over his treasure of Latakia tobacco, he would not even diminish the store by a handful; and finally, he besought his highness to lift up his eyes and note the commanding stature and great strength and vigour of this candidate for slavery, which would render him such a precious possession. The old Turk was so much moved by these pertinent observations, that instead of consigning Yauco to the hands of the executioner, he at once named him to an important post in his household, and then dismissed the whole party, utterly exhausted with the exertion of talking so much. Calmly and nobly as the young Bulgarian had prepared for death, in all the strength and pride of his manhood, it must be owned that his heart beat thick, and his sight grew dim, when the strong hope of life renewed rushed over his spirit; but he turned resolutely from the dreams and promises of a long futurity which seemed to rise for him from the certainty of his restored existence, for he knew and felt that he must henceforth walk as on the brink of a pre- Meanwhile, Michaïl dwelt friendless and alone in the cipice. Yauco was no longer a man whose actions could home he had made so solitary for a time. So absorbed be guided either by his own wishes or those of others: had he been by his slavish fears, that he could do nothing he had a high and steady principle, which he deemed but rejoice in the relief from all dread which Yauco's it right to obey, and from which neither changing cir- absence afforded him; and he found that he was now cumstance, nor his own self-interest, could turn him. to enjoy a double security; for not only did he, by the He was firmly determined to yield the pasha all due most abject submission, allay the suspicions which submission, and to serve him with fidelity and zeal; Yauco's conduct had so often excited, but gradually his but when he should be called upon, as he undoubtedly very existence ceased to be remembered, or thought of would be, sooner or later, in obeying his master's laws, at all. Those who had frequented his hut, either as to sin against those of his conscience, he was quietly friends or as enemies of his son, no longer thought of resolved to exchange his obedience for death. For a coming near him; and as he was not personally of a distime all went well: he was at once so active and so do- position to excite an interest in any one, he soon found cile, so intelligent and so zealous, that he rose rapidly himself abandoned to a solitude as safe as it was dismal. in the pasha's favour, and was advanced from one re- It is inherent in human nature always to exaggerate sponsible post to another, till at last he found favour in present evils, whilst those that are gone by lose much the eyes of the pasha, to the perilous extent of exciting of their real, and all their artificial gloom, as they rethe jealousy of his other dependents. Even the favourite treat into the region of the rose-coloured past. Michail who owed him his life soon began to regret bitterly soon began to fancy the terrors he had suffered from that his feelings had betrayed him into the rare instance his son's rashness but a trifling ill compared to the of Turkish gratitude which we have recorded; and when dreariness and joylessness of his present existence. The he at last perceived that his whimsical lord was already indestructible power of natural affection was stirring at reposing more confidence in Yauco than in himself, he his heart, too, in secret; and gradually the image of the determined as speedily as possible to take measures for son he had dealt by so cruelly began to haunt his lonely repairing the mistake he had made in so heedlessly hours. At first, it was only in his dreams by night saving him from the bowstring. It was after the lapse that the vision came to him; for by day he drove all of but a few months that the favourite, now quite re- such recollections from his mind. But in his troubled stored to the peculiar prudence and foresight of a Mos- sleep he was perpetually visited by the appearance of lem, went to hold a consultation with the pasha's doctor his son- sometimes as he remembered him in his on the best and quietest mode of destroying the life guileless, happy childhood, or as he had last seen him which that functionary is expected in all countries to looking round on him with his long gaze. of mournful preserve. This person, who was a most vile little tenderness. At length Michaïl had an attack of the Armenian, was a far greater adept in dexterously re- terrible marsh fever, far more violent than he had ever lieving people of their troublesome neighbours than in before experienced; and then it was, in sickness and removing their maladies; and when his visitor began pain, unwatched and untended, that his heart yearned to talk of poisons, and whether they were most palat- for the loving child whose unremitting care had often able as administered in coffee, or inhaled in tobacco- soothed him through the long sad nights; and with smoke, he interrupted him by asking what he would bitterest remorse he owned to himself that he would give him if he devised a scheme by which the uncon- now have braved any danger to behold him once more scious Yauco should be made, so to speak, to cut his in his embrace. In his delirium, when no one was at own throat, and consummate his doom by his own rash-hand to give him the drop of water for which he craved, ness, without the necessity of his quondam friend in- often did he shriek out in agony, thinking he beheld curring any risks. The favourite only answered by him dying or dead; but as the fever began to abate, taking off a splendid ring, and handing it to his adviser. his mind, weakened by illness, became entirely engrossed The Armenian placed it on his finger, and at once pro- by one strong conviction-which seemed to have grown ceeded to detail his plan. You remember,' he said, out of the very necessity he felt for believing it-that 'the last time the pasha sent an expedition up to the his son yet lived in spite of all, and would one day mountains, with orders to burn the first village they return to him. Again and again did he dream that he came to, and bring back the young men and women as beheld his boat sweeping down the river towards him; slaves?' The listener made a sign of assent. The and so convinced did he become that this bright vision night before the troop started,' continued the Arme- was one day to be a reality, that as soon as his illness nian, I heard Yauco the Bulgarian talking to their permitted, he crawled out daily to the river side to chief; and what do you think he was saying? He was watch for the coming of the wished-for bark. The trying to persuade him to go to the pasha, and openly unhappy father had, in fact, become almost imbecile refuse to obey such a command!' from the effects of the fever-a result which that species of malady often produces in those countries; and this belief in his son's speedy return was the only idea

'What do you tell me?' exclaimed the favourite: 'you would throw dust in my eyes!'

which retained possession of his weakened intellect thus becoming a kind of monomania. Day after day did the wan, haggard, decrepit old man take his station on the muddy bank of the giant stream, there to watch with never-wearying eyes the particular point where, sweeping round a rapid curve in the river, the current would first bear the boat into sight; and his repeated disappointments had no other effect than to convince him that each new day must indeed be the happy one which should restore to him his exiled child. One evening-just such an evening as that on which he had banished Yauco-his long expectant gaze was at last met by a sight precisely similar to that which on that fatal day had first drawn the attention of the father and son as they stood together. Now he stood alone; but his diseased imagination almost believed that Yauco was again by his side, as again the body of a criminal came floating down the stream, with its shackled feet, and hands bound down upon the breast! There was but one difference, and that was, that the victim was evidently dead long since; some merciful blow against a rock had probably terminated his sufferings, for he lay perfectly motionless, drifting about according to the caprice of the sportive waters. There was a sort of fascination in the gaze which the wretched father fixed on this passive traveller as the swift tide bore it on nearer and nearer to him, till at last a whirling eddy tossed up the corpse beneath his very feet. He bent down to look on the face; then a cry, terrible as the concentrated remorse of months could render it, burst from the lips of the miserable old man. The eyes, fixed, glassy, upturned, were the eyes of his once fair Yauco; the form, the features, were those of the brave son of whose murder he was virtually guilty! Conscience dealt him his own death-blow at the thought: he stretched out his hands towards the body that now was drifting away, and sunk down in convulsions on the ground; while the corpse of his victim, as though it had fulfilled its mission, passed on to seek its mighty sepulchre in the tempestuous breast of the deep Black Sea.

EARLY DAYS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. If one would learn an instructive lesson of what upwards of a century and a-half have done for the progress of knowledge, and just perceptions of nature, it can scarcely be derived from a better source than the history of the Royal Society of London. With this view, it has been our amusement to take from the shelf a parcel of the early volumes of the Philosophical Transactions, and contrast them with a few of those published during the past four or five years. In so doing, we are not long in discovering that we place the child by the giant's side. To those who have the taste and the opportunity, we heartily commend this exercise; while, for our own part, we venture to offer, neither in an ill-natured, nor in a self-laudatory spirit, a few stray gleanings from the recorded gambols of the child-philosophers of those early days.

criticised, in a spirit with which we have no sympathy, by Sir John Hill, who published a bitter review of them in 1751. The Tatler' also utters this oblique satire at the scientific acquirements of the then members of the society:-When I meet with a young fellow that is a humble admirer of the sciences, but more dull than the rest of the company, I conclude him to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. Our own feeling is far different: with the eccentric Bishop Wilkins, and the indefatigable Mr Oldenburgh for their first secretaries, those who know the character of these unwearied rarity-seekers, must expect a certain mixture of trifling to be combined with the more solid portions of these volumes. This being also the character of the times, it was the imperfection inseparable from childhood. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the genius of Newton, Boyle, Hook, Flamsteed, and many more, illuminates these pages with rays of light, many of which have penetrated into, some probably beyond, our own era. It is right to add that, in 1750, the Royal Society disclaimed the Philosophical Transactions as its representative, and great care has since been taken to prevent the appearance of inferior articles. What blame there is for the faults of the first forty-seven volumes, has been laid on the shoulders of the unfortunate secretaries, rather unjustly in our estimation; but from the forty-eighth volume to the present period, these Transactions are among the noblest literary monuments to science our country can boast of.

The

But to our gleanings. The vagaries in natural history to be found in these early papers are very amusing: thus in one of the volumes we find what is denominated a rectification of the account of the salamander. Conceive our surprise in discovering it to be a narrative respecting a salamander brought by a virtuoso from the Indies, which, when cast into the fire, did actually swell and vomit forth a thick slimy matter which put out the neighbouring coals, and repeated this wonderful fire-extinguishing act many times for the space of two hours, so often as the coals rekindled! migratory instinct has always proved too seductive a fancy to be resisted even by Fellows of the Royal Society; therefore are we solemnly assured that it is a thing most certain that, on the approach of winter, swallows do sink themselves into lakes, no otherwise than frogs; the venerable author adding, that it was customary to draw them out with a net, together with fishes, and to put them near the fire, when they revived! But this is not half florid enough for another writer, who ominously intimates his belief that the earth is accompanied by a hitherto undiscovered satellite, not very far off, to whose more hospitable clime our birds of passage direct their flight! Fossils proved a sad perplexity to the philosophers of that epoch. Three or four elaborate papers appeared upon this subject; but we scarcely expect credit for the extract which follows, although the articles can easily be referred to. The writer having discovered some curious substances in the rocks of the Mendip Hills, which he conceived to resemble We may preface our desultory gatherings by men- plants, set about the investigation with great ardour, and tioning that the Royal Society was instituted solely for in proper form comes to this decision upon their nature. the encouragement and advancement of physical and These are rock-plants; they grow from fine clay; they mathematical science. But it took origin in days when are at first smooth, and by degrees become covered with the disposition of the minds of philosophers was rather knots; they have a soft pith, which is constantly reprone to the search for the wonderful. Prodigies and freshed by mineral steams and moisture rising through supernaturalities had long been in vogue: they were the its roots. The free supply of moisture is of course more ghosts and bugbears of the common mind; yet they left necessary to these plants than to those which grow a bias even upon the minds of the learned, who were thus above ground, since nature carries on her mineral geneled into the most ludicrous errors. That was a period of ration with a stronger effort than the other. These dim uncertain light, when every object beheld was in-stone-plants have true life and growth: as to that ridivested with an unreality of detail, and an exaggeration culous opinion, that they were only parts of plants or of outline; ours is the brighter daylight, less romantic, animals petrified, it seems not to be grounded on any but more faithful. The early papers of those members of practical knowledge;' the principal objection to it was, the Royal Society who contributed to the Philosophical that these productions were totally unlike any known Transactions, forcibly illustrate our position, and the species of either kingdom. Now for the author's theory: volumes of this period present us with a jumble of he says, that as we may see figures in snow, and discern science, blunders, singularities, and follies very droll to landscapes in stones, and the exact resemblance of contemplate. These early papers have been severely fern leaves in coals, all painted in pure caprice by the

hand of nature, so here she was creating in the same mood plants of stone. What a downfall is it for all these ingenuities to learn that the mysterious things in question were only a parcel of nummulites, one or two starfishes, and some corallines! Another has a theory about fossils equally strange, possibly even more startling. He accounts thus for their formation:-The former occupants of these bodies lay upon the surface of the soil; the rain falling on them, dissolved their salts, and washed them down into the earth, where they again concreted, and resumed their original forms. This was a revival of a theory entertained long before by other philosophers, who accounted for ghosts by saying that the exhalations of the bodies of the dead resumed the form of the persons they proceeded from. We fear also that a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of the council, has to answer for the absurd delusion respecting barnacle-geese getting a firmer hold than ever not only on the minds of the vulgar, but on the belief of the learned. Sir Robert Moray undertook a journey into the northern parts of Scotland purposely to examine into the truth of the commonly-received account of the birth of geese from barnacles. He wrote a paper upon the subject on his return; and-will it be believed?-he positively asserts, without the smallest compunction, that in every barnacle he opened he found a perfect sea-fowl: the bill was like that of a goose; the head, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feet were like those of other water-fowl; the very feathers were perfectly formed, and were of a black colour! How it was possible that any man pretending to credit or learning could write such a palpable exaggeration, in a professedly philosophical journal, it is hard to conceive. This paper is contained in No. 137.

of a calf with a strong thorax and Wharton Jones's microscopical investigations into the structure of the blood-corpuscule.

We see these incongruities now, but they beheld them not then; and it is far from rare to find the same volume contain some of the profound papers of Sir Isaac Newton, then plain Mr Newton, with some trivial account of a storm of hail which broke somebody's or a great many people's windows. Had it not been our attempt to condense this article, it would have been easy to have extended it by adducing many more instances illustrative of the feebleness which, in some respects, characterised the steps of philosophy in the middle and toward the close of the seventeenth century. The force of the contrast will not be weakened by leaving the subject here. While we look back in a sort of merry wonder, and congratulate ourselves on our present position of advancement, let us look forward with humility, anticipating the day when our own blemishes will appear as conspicuously puerile as those of ancestral philosophy to us.

EDINBURGH CONVIVIALIA.*

A GLIMPSE AT PAST TIMES.

TAVERN dissipation, now so rare amongst the respectable classes of the community, formerly prevailed in Edinburgh to an incredible extent, and engrossed the leisure hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting even the most stern and dignified. No rank, class, or profession, indeed, formed an exception to this rule. Nothing was so common in the morning as to meet men of high rank and official dignity reeling home from a close in the High Street, where they had spent the night in drinking. Nor was it unusual to find two or three of his majesty's most honourable Lords of Council and Session mounting the bench in the forenoon in a crapulous state. A gentleman one night stepping into Johnnie Dowie's, opened a side door, and looking into the room, saw a sort of agger or heap of snoring lads upon the floor, illumined by the gleams of an expiring candle. Wha may thae be, Mr Dowie?' inquired the visitor. 'Oh,' quoth John, in his usual quiet way, 'just twa-three o' Sir Willie's drucken clerks!'-meaning the young gentlemen employed in Sir William Forbes's banking-house, whom, of all earthly mortals, one would have expected to be observers of the decencies.

To this testimony may be added that of all published works descriptive of Edinburgh during the last century. Even in the preceding century, if we are to believe Taylor the Water-poet, there was no superabundance of sobriety in the town. The worst thing,' says that sly humorist in his Journey' (1623), was, that wine and ale were so scarce, and the people such misers of it, that every night, before I went to bed, if any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not have made him a sober answer.'

Many a traveller's tale finds acceptance in these pages. A Mr Glover, travelling in Virginia, gives a minute account of an apparition which astonished him as he was leisurely floating down the river. This was none other than a merman! a creature with a grim and terrible aspect, and a head and body like a man; but on diving, it flourished aloft-and here, we fear, other folk are flourishing also-a tail like that of a fish. Mr Glover's friend appears to have been an unlucky Indian bathing! Many equally veracious statements might be selected, had we space. Mr Oldenburgh himself, in criticising Kircher's work on China, quotes the tremendous tales of an elephant eating sugar-canes, and of their taking root in his interior; and of a boy who ate serpents with as much gusto as eels, with the mild remark, that these accounts seem to require confirmation. These scientific records were remarkable also for being occasionally occupied with silly communications upon subjects widely different from their express objects. What would now be the perplexity of a reader of the Philosophical Transactions to find a paper bearing such a title as the following: A true and exact relation of the dismal and surprising effects of a terrible and unusual clap of thunder, with lightning, that fell The diurnal of a Scottish judge of the beginning of upon the Trumball galley,' communicated by R. M., kettle- the last century, which I have perused, presents a strikdrummer to his majesty? Or to find next to some of Dring picture of the habits of men of business in that age. Faraday's electrical researches, 'A particular account of two monstrous pigs with human faces?' Or the relation concerning one Clark, a posture-master; which Clark, sure enough, was a wonderful man in his way, for he possessed the faculty of disjointing himself all over, and reducing a naturally well-made frame at pleasure to the condition of a complicated cripple. The article states, that he so imposed upon a celebrated surgeon, that the latter pronounced his case to be utterly hopeless; and that he often left the room, and returned so altered-humpbacked, deformed, and horribly distorted-as to draw forth a shower of alms from the company, who were ignorant of his being the same person. Or supposing we put the account of the way to kill rattlesnakes with a bunch of pennyroyal by the side of Professor Baden Powell's investigations on light, or Mr Airy's astronomical calculations; or, to contrast more kindred subjects, set side by side the marvellous history

Hardly a night passes without some expense being incurred at taverns, not always of very good fame, where his lordship's associates on the bench were his boon companions in the debauch. One is at a loss to understand how men who drugged their understandings so habitually, could possess any share of vital faculty for the consideration or transaction of business, or how they contrived to make a decent appearance in the hours of duty. But however difficult to be accounted for, there seems no room to doubt that deep drinking was compatible in many instances with good business talents, and even application. Many living men connected with the Court of Session can yet look back to a juvenile period of their lives, when some of the ablest advocates and most esteemed judges were noted for their con

*FromTraditions of Edinburgh,' by R. Chambers; a new and much amended edition, just published.