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creature, so recklessly exhibited at such a moment, revolted me; but, happily, the suffering was brief. Ten minutes only had elapsed when the bell once more sounded, every one resumed his seat, and the officials returned to their places, closely followed by the jury. When order had been restored, the President, in a tone of more solemnity than he had hitherto used, asked the supreme question: "Gentlemen of the jury, is the prisoner guilty, or not guilty?"

The jury rose, and the foreman steadily replied,

"NOT GUILTY, M. le Président."

The effect of the verdict was electrical. It appeared as though, like myself, nine-tenths of the auditory had believed that there existed no hope for the accused; and while a joyous whisper arose on all sides, I remarked that the Procureur, who had so earnestly striven to secure the condemnation of the prisoner, turned a congratulatory smile upon her advocate, whose anxiety had rendered him as pale as marble; but this circumstance was soon forgotten in what followed.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said the President, "it is my duty to compliment you upon your verdict; you have ably and honourably fulfilled the trust reposed in you. There can be no doubt, in any honest mind, that you have come to a true and just decision. At the commencement of my legal career, when I was yet a mere youth, the interests of my employer compelled me to reside, during several weeks, in the hamlet of which the accused was a native. I have never forgotten-I never shall forget -what I witnessed in that obscure village. It is enough for me to assure you that throughout the whole of my after-experience, I was never forced into contact with so utterly worthless a set of individuals; jealousy, slander, and falsehood were the aliments upon which they appeared to exist; and it was more than sufficient that the accused, whose reputation you have restored by a most righteous verdict, was pure and modest; and that

by the united charms of her person and her character, she had raised herself from a low station to one of comparative affluence, for every mouth to be opened against her. Gentlemen of the jury, once more I say, that I congratulate you; and that I believe the accused to be as innocent of the crimes imputed to her as either you or I."

I could scarcely trust my senses as I listened, and remembered that this very man, only a few hours previously, had branded the prisoner as a wretch so sunk in vice as to be "capable of anything;" but I could detect no similar surprise on any countenance about me. It did not appear to strike his listeners that he had, at the commencement of the trial, cruelly exceeded his privilege, and even foresworn his own conscience. There was no murmur of indignation, no evidence of disgust; but, on the contrary, an approving smile beamed on him from every side, as if in recompense of his tardy frankness.

I was still lost in wonder, when his voice again sounded through the hall

"Bring in the prisoner."

In another moment she once more occupied her frightful station; and then the greffier announced to her, in the same monotonous tone as that in which he had read her accusation, the verdict by which she stood acquitted.

In an instant the purple flush faded from her cheeks, and she became as white as a corpse. She swept her hands across her forehead, gave one long stare about her, and then, with a shriek which rang through the court rather like the cry of a wild animal than the utterance of human lips, she made a spring towards the door, nearly oversetting the gendarmes by whom it was guarded, and disappeared.

All was over. The officials collected their papers; the counsel threw off their gowns; the crowd dispersed; and I regained my home, fervently thanking God that it was not thus that justice was administered in my own happy country.

THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL.

BY PROFESSOR R. HUNT.

THE beauty-the infinite variety-of the vegetable world has ever been a theme for the poet's song. To man, even in his present advanced state of intelligence, a plant is surrounded with many mysteries; and the contemplative mind sees a shadow of Divinity in the strange vitality of each green leaf. How much more mysterious must these wondrous organisms have appeared, when the lights of science burned dimly on the earth, or were obscured by the thick veil of superstitious ignorance.

The psychological influences of plants and flowers are continually figured forth in writings sacred and profane: the earliest poetry, as the latest song, bears evidence of the effects produced by them upon the human mind. The olive-branch of the Noahician dove has ever been the emblem of peace; and since Job wrote "he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down," the transitory beauties of vegetable life have been regarded as emblems of the instability of human existence. To pass over those oriental philosophies, which invested all nature with a pantheistic spirit, and the lotus worship of the Egyptian priests, we find, in the poetic mythology of the Greeks, abundant evidence of the holy dreams kindled by the contemplation of the vegetable world. The sacred wreath of myrtle spoke to the human spirit of mortality; and the immortality of the soul was typified by the corn sown in the earth, by its revival in the green blade, and by its full ripeness in the golden harvest.

By the Greek, every tree was invested with a divinity-a spirit held possession of every grove; thus giving poetical expression to their dim consciousness of that vitality which a modern philosophy-with somewhat too much haste refers to certain physical forces or powers. Again, in the wilder mythologies of the Scandinavian races, the creation of more northern and less luxuriant climes, we have a similar expression of the human dream, in the sylph which nestled amid the petals of the rose, or our own fairy, sporting in the shadows of the lovely fern.

Men, then, have ever felt the "sweet influences" of

"Whatever earth, all-bearing mother, yields,

In India East or West, or middle shore,
In Pontus, or the Punic coast, or where
Alcinos reign'd"

And even now, when a material philosophy invades the realms of poetry, there linger around the vegetable creation unknown agencies-mysteries of life-which appear to radiate, like the painted glories of the holy saints; lights, redolent of that sanctity and love, which still linger over the earth as a type of the joys of the lost Eden.

A certain class of experimentalists- -we were about to call them philosophers, which would have been a very incorrect appellation-have been lately endeavouring to refer the grander phenomena of animal life to electrical agency. They have, for example, constituted the brain a voltaic battery, and the nerves conducting wires; and according to the amount of certain chemical changes, is, they say, the quantity of electricity in action-which is true-and the quantity of vitality, vis vita, or life exerted, of which we know no more than did Hamlet the Dane. These savans rush to the conclusion that life and electricity are but modified forms of one physical force; because, during the operations of vitality, electrical phenomena are manifested. Applying their rule of materiality to the highest phenomena of life, they refer the vitality of plants as well as animals to electricity. Even the human senses are explained by certain rude analogies between their operations and those electro-chemical agencies which are developed in the voltaic battery. It would be out of place to explain all the sources of error; it is sufficient to say, that a false logic, based upon imperfect analogies, (reasoning by analogy being always dangerous,) has led to the substitution of the effect for the cause. Man, the monarch of the world, is charged, as a duty, with its subjugation; every created materiality he may examine; and even the physical agencies by which the constitution of the organic and the inorganic kingdoms is regulated he may employ as his ministering spirits. There is, however, a line drawn, beyond which he is forbidden to pass; and if, in his temerity, he oversteps the boundary, he is speedily involved in lamentable confusion and wreck.

Life is a condition of spirituality; and, although we discover heat, electricity, and chemical action manifested during its operations, depend upon it, neither of these physical powers are capable of conversion into any form of vitality. The Creator "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a

living soul." Life, therefore, an emanation from the Eternal, is far removed beyond the most subtle materialities, and is infinitely superior in action and influences to any of those physical agencies which we can detect by the aids of our philosophy.

Having thus explained that, in our consideration of the phenomena of living organisms, we deal only with those agencies which may, in distinction to the spiritual agency, LIFE, be termed material, we turn first to the conditions of animal existence.

The animal fabric is made up of a certain amount of earthy matter which constitutes the solidifying portion of the bones, of muscle, blood, and fat, all of which are compounds, in varying proportions, of gases, familiar to us by the names oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, with carbon-which is, be it remembered, only charcoal in a state of purity. If we take a portion of any animal body and expose it to heat, we, in the first place, dissipate a large quantity of water; and of course the weight of the mass is very considerably reduced. If the temperature is now increased, we shall find that every portion undergoes decomposition; and if the escaping gases are collected, they will be found to weigh exactly the amount lost in the process. Eventually, the temperature being sufficiently high, and supposing the experiment to have been made in a closed vessel, a mass of animal charcoal alone will be left behind, mixed with some earthy matter. Let us convert this into carbonic acid, by burning it in contact with air, and a little white ash will be the only residue. "A pinch of dust," says the poet, "alone remains of Cheops." The noblest human being subjected to this chemical analysis will be resolved into those few gaseous elements, and a few grains of earthy matter, consisting mainly of flint and of lime.

Careful examination proves that the animal draws his supply directly from the vegetable world; that, indeed, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are in mutual dependence on each other. Animal life is supported by carbonaceous and nitrogenous foods, which are prepared in the vast laboratory of the vegetable kingdom. The herbivora derive all their muscle and fat from the grass of the field upon which they feed; and on these the carnivora prey, requiring for the conditions of their existence that they receive the muscle and fat already formed. Was the vegetable world to perish, the vegetable-eating tribes must die; and, these ceasing to be, the flesh-eaters must inevitably perish. Nor is this all. Let us suppose

the world to be possessed by animals only, and examine the conditions of such a state of creation. All the animal races are, during every moment of their lives, pouring forth into the atmosphere the products of that combustion to which the maintenance of animal heat is due. As from the fires of our furnaces and of our domestic hearths carbonic acid is constantly formed, and delivered to the air, from the charcoal combining with the oxygen it contains; so, in the processes of life, with every exhalation, each animal would add to the store of atmospheric carbon, which, in its combination with oxygen, forming carbonic acid, is of a deadly character. Thus, the earth's atmosphere would become so far deteriorated, that animal life would cease under the very influences it had created.

Animals and man, and all the processes by which man, with the subtle agency of fire, reduces nature to his bidding, constantly give rise to carbonic acid. On the lowest computation, the population of London alone must add to the atmosphere daily at least four million pounds of this gas. Consider, therefore, the enormous quantity of carbonic acid which all the inhabitants of this planet are hourly producing. The destructive nature of this air is shown by the almost immediate death of those who incautiously descend into deep wells or brewers' vats, in which accumulations of this compound of carbon and oxygen are commonly found. Therefore, were this allowed to accumulate in the air, it would render our atmosphere destructive to all animal life; we should die by a poison of our own production, as heaps of miserable slaves have died in the holds of the slave-ships, and as prisoners have perished when forced in numbers into close cells. It is certain, therfore, that some means must have been devised by nature for the purpose of removing, as readily as it is formed, this deleterious product of animal life. In a former article, it has been shown, that, by a provision, remarkable for its harmony and efficiency, this carbonic acid is rendered the necessary food for the vegetable kingdom; and that, under the influence of light, it is taken to supply that woody matter which we find in such enormous masses in the great forests of the tropics, and in large, though yet smaller proportions, in the trees and plants of the temperate and arctic regions. The entire subject is of such exceeding interest, that it appears necessary to guide our contemplations: some brief digression should be made to familiarise the mind with the conditions.

The animal and the vegetable kingdoms, it

has been said, are mutually dependent upon each other; the former could not exist, if the latter were removed; and if the animal races were by some dire cataclysm swept away, the vegetable kingdom would speedily perish; one cannot exist without the other in some of the forms in which living organisms are developed. It has been thought by some, that, during the great geological epoch to which the formation of our coal deposits belongs, enormous forests of tree-ferns and similar plants waved in a tropical luxuriance over the areas now occupied with fossil fuel, there being an entire absence of animal life. It was the hypothesis of an eminent geologist, that these quick-growing plants were employed to remove carbonic acid from the air, and fit the earth's surface for the existence of animals. Unfortunately for the hypothesis, geological research has proved the existence of air-breathing animals during the carboniferous epoch; and the probability is, that, much further back in the scale of time, the world teemed with moving organisms. This bit of scientific romance has, however, been seized by the public mind, and some of our most popular writers have employed it to add to the interest of their compositions. We have now, however, the most satisfactory evidence, to prove the existence of animal life during every epoch when vegetation covered the face of the land.

The maintenance of animal heat, which is an essential element for the support of animal life, is due, almost entirely, to chemical action, and to chemical action exerted on the food taken into the stomach, to supply the waste of the system. As the temperature of the different zones of the earth's surface varies, so we discover some very remarkable changes in the habits of the inhabitants. Those races who inhabit the inter-tropical climes are largely fruit-eaters, the quantity of animal food made use of by them being exceedingly small. As we advance towards the temperate regions of the earth, we find the inhabitants eating more flesh; but still it is mainly the muscular or nitrogenous parts which are consumed. Let us advance to the colder regions of "the ice-bound north," and there we shall find man eating enormous quantities of fat as food, and using animal oil as a common drink. Most startling statements are in print of the gluttonous meals made by the Esquimaux and the Indians along the frozen shores of Northern Asia. Strange as these narrations appear to us, they are the natural consequences of the situation in which these men have been placed. Anima heat must be maintained; and where the atmo- |

sphere, from its extremely low temperature, is rapidly robbing the body of the heat it developes, the supply of highly-carbonized foodwhich stands in the relation of fuel-must of necessity suffer a corresponding increase. The food of man is regulated by a law from which he dare not deviate without suffering.

Man, and the lower animals, are constantly consuming azotized and carbonaceous matter; and water, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen, is their constant pabulum. The nitrogen of the former combines with the hydrogen of the water, to form ammonia; and the carbon of the latter, with its oxygen and that of the air, to form carbonic acid. These pass into the atmosphere, and are the most important principles upon which the vegetable world depends.

Man walks the earth, its monarch; all things material he may, by the power of his mighty mind, subdue to do him service. And yet we find him a mere dependency upon the vegetable world; and in return for the support of life, by the supply of the elements of nutrition which it gives him, man, the mighty, is made the machine for furnishing food for the tender leaves, which tremble to every passing breeze.

All natural phenomena progress in a circle, and each division of nature is dependent upon one another. We have not yet discovered all the links of the chain; but, depend upon it, no one in the band by which the creation is bounded is wanting.

The cedars of Lebanon, which waved above the head of Solomon, have grown, and added to their bulk, by absorbing the carbonic acid formed by the men who aided that mighty king to build his temple to the Lord, and those who, generation after generation, have mouldcred to dust, even to those now living and breathing, in performance of the destined ends. The palms of the tropics-the glorious flowers of far southern lands-the fruits of Asia and America the humbler, but no less beautiful, European trees and flowers-the herb of the valley, and the weed upon the wall-are all of them the result of animal life. They have fixed, for a season, the elements produced in the animal economy, at the same time as they aid in supplying all that is demanded by the waste which the necessities of life compels.

The plant is stationary, and is chemically nature's laboratory for producing gluten, starch, sugar, gum, resin, and all the elements for the formation of flesh and fat.

The animal is locomotive, and may be regarded as an apparatus for combustion. All the compounds formed by the plant are taken into its furnace, and returned in a gaseous con

dition, reduced to the more simple elements, back to the air.

The plant, under the excitation of light, again absorbs these principles, combines them anew, and gives them back to the animal races

once more.

Thus are the changes for ever occurring. Nature knows no rest; but, like the o'erlaboured Psyche, toils on for ever. Matter now existing in one form of organization will soon become a disorganized mass; but the spirit of change is working in it, and its chaos gradually assumes new conditions of organization, and puts on new forms of beauty. We may constantly witness the renewal of the great work of creation. The world was without form and roid, and darkness was upon the face of the

:

deep the mighty word, "let there be light," was spoken, the light was; and chaos became, beneath its mysterious touch, converted into a world teeming with every form of life, and glowing with the beautiful.

The round of organic change-the conversion of inorganic matter into an organized form-exhibits to us that constant renewal of creation, which must, to every thinking mind, carry home the conviction that the presiding care of a Creator is over all things now, as it was in the beginning. Things are mutable to us we may read the story of the earth's mutations on the tablets of her mountainsbut these changes are but the pulsations of time, marking the progression of order and life around the circle of eternity.

1

A LITTLE BIT OF ENGLISH HISTORY.

SELECTED FROM SOME UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS AT ROCHESTER.

AN immense time ago, when people used their swords to settle a dispute, instead of giving each other to the lawyers to be sucked gradually to death-when might and right were identical-and when people put off their consciences till their death-bed, and then gave them to their confessors to clear up and brighten a certain baron, by some means or other, got possession of the keep of a certain castle, which, for obvious reasons, shall be nameless.

This baron was not exactly the sort of character you would have selected as a companion for your son at college, as a husband for your last and youngest daughter, or as chief executor, supposing your affairs were rather in disorder. In fact, viewed by the prejudiced and artificial standard of modern times, we much doubt whether he might not have made one in a public procession, terminating in a suffocating sensation about the regions of the larynx, or have gone to discover new countries at the expense of government. But in these days, when we have utterly lost that fine chivalrous taste which alone can make murder and rapine the virtues they are, we must not hope to arrive at a just estimate of characters like that of the knight Sir Cœur Shaverre.

Sir Cœur Shaverre was one of those amiable gentlemen who combine a taste for the property of other people with great profusion in the use of their own. Had ruining tradesmen then been the fashion, there is no doubt that he would have had a column erected, with his own statue at the top, by an admiring and

grateful posterity. But, alas! in his days, plate glass windows and long credit were unknown. With the best will to become an accomplished swindler, he lacked the opportunity; for a swindler without tradesmen, is like a vampire in a family where there are no daughters.

Sir Cœur Shaverre, however, made up for the deficiency; in fact, he rather over-acted his part at times. What with pillaging smaller gentlemen, laying farmers under tribute, and bearing about as good a reputation as Don Giovanni in his private life, he contrived to render himself as fine a mediaeval hero as ever died penitent, or slept in effigy, with a dog for his pillow, and a lion to keep his feet warm.

But our knight was not content with the vices of this world. Although his time was too much taken up to allow of his devoting it to the seven liberal arts, and although he hated reading as much as he did the Bible itself, still he was like a good many other rascals, tolerably superstitious, and had some indefinite ideas about the other world, which troubled him sorely when he was sober. Fortunately, however, for his peace of mind, such intervals were of rare occurrence.

It must not be supposed that our knight felt anxious about his soul, or its condition hereafter. On the contrary, he left all that to his confessor, and his confessor never alarmed him with troublesome suggestions. But Sir Cœur Shaverre, with that genuine love of wickedness for its own sake, which distinguishes the higher class of sinners, must needs take to the

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