and each was more wretched than the one before, until at last they were lost to the sight of all who knew them: they were absorbed, as some said, in the great city, but I knew they were engulphed; they were obliged to come to where I was busiest at the time, and I slew them with the rest. And yet she died bravely, too," said Puretos; "she wrought to the very last. Her work was coarse and rough, such as they generally give to men; but she died with the needle in her hand. A neighbour found her sitting in the corner of the cellar where she slept, who drew down the lids over her parched and staring eye-balls, and covered the body with the work she found in its hands. She was an easy prey," said the young man, "for her day's earnings could not buy a small loaf for her children, and, as she tasted but little food, she was very weak. There was great gain, however, in her death, though she was so poor; for, two days after she died, the master for whom she laboured, not having received his work, came to her room to charge her with a theft; and having taken it away from the corpse, I hid myself in the folds, and he died in a week."

"It was well done,” said the king. now hear how Sacerdos died?"

"Let us

"Sacerdos died, as it were, full of life: he seemed to mock me," said Puretos; "he was so calm and tranquil at the end. I tried to dash his arms about, as I have done to stronger men, but I could not stir them: so fast were his hands joined together in prayer, that no power could sever them, and thus he died."

Then the young man handed the king the roll, and he joined it on to the one he had received before.

"We will now hear Consumptia," said the king; "our fair cousin is generally as diligent as the rest.

At this word the fair girl arose, and read from her roll a multitude of names. There were some titled, and some seemed as though they also belonged to the very poor; for Consumptia was so gentle, that she had access to all.

"I have done much, yet I have done gently," said the sweet-toned voice. "I have bound up some broken hearts with a touch insensible; some who have been worsted in life's battle I have led from the field with a hand invisible : I have not killed, but I have persuaded men to die; and so softly have I whispered to them, that, bending over them, my cheek has rested upon theirs, and I have coloured it with my own bright blush. I have gazed upon them until their eyes have reflected back so bright

a lustre, that none would believe the sick ones were about to die. I love not rude and uncourteous words," said the maiden, "and such have never passed my lips. I have wooed and won. I have filled the heart with hope, while I dried its springs of life; I have floated fairy visions across the eye, even while I stole its light. Men have passed with me from the world as the stars steal silently away before the dawn: while there was a promise of more light, they faded to be seen no more. I have been very patient," said the maiden. I have sat with the lawyer as he pored over his books; I have stood beside the priest as he preached to the living, and as he buried the dead; I have waited for the mother until she had nursed her babe; and as gently and as gloriously as autumn falls upon the forest tree and lowly shrub, have I laid my hand upon the rich and poor. I have done," said she, “by the peasant in his cot as I have done by the peer in his marble hall; I have lent hope and beauty to them all-I have wooed and won them all."

The grey-haired old man smiled, for he loved Consumptia; she was so gentle, like himself; and the king took her roll, and added it to the rest.

Then followed the gloomy-looking man, who told horrible deeds of suicide and murder; and the strong, tall woman, dressed in black, who read a list of such as had died of Malice or Revenge; and the youth with the silver cup, which he handed to the king as his instrument of death.

All then read the contents of their long rolls, and the king took them, that they might be safely stored up until he held his court again.

XIII.

While the attendants at Death's court gave in their rolls, and told the particulars of their achievements, the mind of the baronet was attentively fixed on each. He was now awed and softened, though, as yet, he was not convinced. He had seen that there was so much misery in the world, that his own was nothing when compared with it; but how a merciful and good spirit could preside over an earth with so much wretchedness in it he could not understand.

But the lesson so well begun was not to be left unfinished. When all these rolls were added together, the king turned to Sir Aubrey, and said:"There is wisdom in mortality; there is goodness even in death." Then he bade one of the company, whose name was Tempus, read from the roll of his prophecies

concerning all the cases on which the old man, Puretos, and Consumptia had dwelt, that the baronet might learn from death a lesson concerning life,

Tempus, who had wings upon his shoulders and his feet, and a measuring line in his hand, drew from his girdle a roll, which was written with ink so pale, that no mortal eye could have deciphered its contents.

"What saith it of Crusos?" said the king. "Had Crusos lived but one week more, tempted by the high price of bread, he would have purchased up all the corn in the city; and so fast would he have held it, that thousands must have perished for want of food."

"What saith it of Senex and of the three children ?"

"Had the children lived, the old man would have never been content to die: he would have been wedded to the earth, and have lost his soul."

"What is written concerning Industria ?"

"Had Industria remained in affluence, there were two demons commissioned to slay her soul with haughtiness and pride; but, under the guidance of a maiden called Paupertas, who was sent to draw her from their reach, she has escaped, and Puretos has finished the kindly work."

"Sacerdos also died young! What is written of the priest ?"

"Had Sacerdos lived, the fame of his doings amongst the poor would have reached the ears of the high ones of the land, and being bent upon rewarding merit, they would have preferred him to a post of honour and of wealth; then Sacerdos must have fallen from his simplicity and charity, and only through a long course of trial and of chastisement, far more bitter than any death, could he have been restored again."

"Thou hearest," said the king, as he turned to Sir Aubrey, "that all that we have done hath been both just and good. Go back to life, and live for death."

Then the king received from the hand that had crowned him a roll, on which were inscribed the names of such as were to die before they all met there again, and portioning out the names amongst his court, he dismissed them to carry out their work.

XIV.

Long while might Sir Aubrey have remained in the catacombs, had not a loud knocking been now heard at the gates. Violently were they shaken to and fro, and in strode a man whose tall figure was bent as though he had

been very aged, and whose hair was white, as though it had been silvered with the snows of many years. His name was Sapiens; and although so young, he had read and studied more than many of the wise men of the city, and had been a philosopher of no small renown. Only a year before, he had been an oracle of wisdom; now his intellect was shattered, the home of thought was desolated, and its tenant had for ever fled. The pockets of the stranger were filled with many small articles of clothing, such as would be used by a little girl of three or four years old, and he held some broken toys most carefully in his hands. Amongst them was a ball of many colours, which had apparently been unused as yet.

"Give me back my child, O Death!" said he; "I never gave thee leave to keep her here so long. Have I not written much in thy praise; then why requite me by stealing my only joy ?"

Then he listened, but no one answered; and he cried out again and again, until the heavy velvet on the coffins seemed to absorb the sounds, and they loomed back heavily upon his heart, like the beatings of a muffled drum.

At last he grew weary of his exertions, and sat down opposite the coffin of a child. It was that which held the form of the one he had loved so well. When he had seated himself, he drew from his pockets all his store, and spread them out upon the ground. First, he settled them in one way, and then he changed them to another, until he had made them as attractive as he could; then he stole gently to the coffin, and put his mouth close to it, and whispered in a low, sweet voice, "Amie! we will have no books to-day, but it shall be all sport until the evening comes. Come, Amie, come; for here are Amie's clothes, and Amie's little toys."

He listened for a while, as though he expected to receive an answer, and then returned to his seat, and took up a little toy: it was the figure of a woman, whose dress was bedizened with much tawdry gold, but which had once seemed very fine. He spent a few minutes arranging its ruffled dress and burnishing the dimmed lace upon its cloak, and then rose from his seat, and said, Come, Amie; here is your favourite! the maid of honour to the queen! Come and play with her again!" Then he took the figure's arms, and made its wooden hands beat upon the coffin-lid. Here, Amie, she is alive; she is trying to wake you; come and play again." Then he listened as he had done before, but there was no answer.

66

It was in vain that he tried every art: he

rolled the coloured ball into the dark recesses of the vault, and back again, and called and called, but no one stirred. At last he gathered all the toys and clothes, and put them up, saying, "Amie is not yet awake; the doctor said that her sleep would be very long."

But Sapiens had been missed, and he had been traced to the catacombs; and now his attendants came to take him home; and there they found Sir Aubrey cold and stiff.

They thought that he was dead, for the cold of the vaults had stiffened his damp clothes, and he was so numbed, that at first he gave no signs of life. With care, however, the keeper of the cemetery succeeded in restoring him; and having explained how he happened to

have been there, he was allowed to return to the crowded city-to the small lodging where he lived.

But Sir Aubrey was a changed man; for years he lived in obscurity, spending the remnant of his fortune, and his energies and time, in softening the hardships of the poor, and in reconciling them to their lot; and when the relation that robbed him of his estate was dead, and it was found that the baronet had been left his heir, the only change that it made to Sir Aubrey was one of place: he carried out on his own broad domains, until he died, the lessons which he had learned from "The Schoolmaster of the Catacombs!"

FLOWERS have been called the stars of the earth; and certainly, when we examine those beautiful creations, and discover them, analyzing the sunbeam, and sending back to the eye the full luxury of coloured light, we must confess there is more real appropriateness in the term than even the poet who conceived the delicate thought imagined. Lavoisier beautifully said "The fable of Prometheus is but the outshadowing of a philosophic truthwhere there is light there is organization and life; where light cannot penetrate, Death for ever holds his silent court." The flowers, and, indeed, those far inferior forms of organic vegetable life which never flower, are direct dependencies on the solar rays. Through every stage of existence they are excited by those subtle agencies which are gathered together in the sunbeam; and to these influences we may trace all that beauty of development which prevails throughout the vegetable world. How few there are, of even those refined minds to whom flowers are more than a symmetric arrangement of petals harmoniously coloured, who think of the secret agencies for ever exciting the life which is within their cells, to produce the organized structure—who reflect on the deep, yet divine philosophy, which may be read in every leaf:-those tongues in trees, which tell us of Eternal goodness and order.

The hurry of the present age is not well suited to the contemplative mind; yet, with all, there must be hours in which to fall back

into the repose of quiet thought becomes a luxury. The nervous system is strung to endure only a given amount of excitement; if its vibrations are quickened beyond this measure, the delicate harp-strings are broken, or they undulate in throbs. To every one the contemplation of natural phenomena will be found to induce that repose which gives vigour to the mind, as sleep restores the energies of a toil-exhausted body. And to show the advantages of such a study, and the interesting lessons which are to be learned in the fields of nature, is the purpose of the present essay.

The flower is regarded as the full development of vegetable growth; and the consideration of its mysteries naturally involves a careful examination of the life of a plant, from the seed placed in the soil to its full maturity, whether it be as herb or tree.

For the perfect understanding of the physical conditions under which vegetable life is carried on, it is necessary to appreciate, in its fulness, the value of the term growth. It has been said that stones grow,-that the formation of crystals was an analogous process to the formation of a leaf; and this impression has appeared to be somewhat confirmed, by witnessing the variety of arborescent forms into which solidifying waters pass, when the external cold spreads it as ice over our windowpanes. This is, however, a great error; stones do not grow-there is no analogy even between the formation of a crystal and the growth of a leaf. All inorganic masses increase in size

only by the accretion of particles-layer upon layer, without any chemical change taking place as an essentiality. The sun may shine for ages upon a stone without quickening it into life, changing its constitution, or adding to its mass. Organic matter consists of arrangements of cells or sacs, and the increase in size is due to the absorption of gaseous matter, through the fine tissue of which they are composed. The gas-a compound of carbon and oxygen-is decomposed by the excitement induced by light; and the solid matter thus obtained is employed in building a new cellor producing actual growth, a true function of life, in all the processes of which matter is constantly undergoing chemical change.

The simplest developments of vegetable life are the formation of confervæ upon water, and of lichens upon the surface of the rock. In chemical constitution, these present no very remarkable differences from the cultivated flower which adorns our garden, or the tree which has risen in its pride amidst the changing seasons of many centuries. Each alike have derived their solid constituents from the atmosphere, and the chemical changes in all are equally dependant upon the powers which have their mysterious origin in the great centre of our planetary system.

Without dwelling upon the processes which take place in the lower forms of vegetable life, the purposes of this essay will be fully answered by taking an example from amongst the higher class of plants, and examining its conditions, from the germination of the sced to the full development of the flower-rich in form, colour, and odour.

In the seed-cell we find, by minute examination, the embryo of the future plant carefully preserved in its envelope of starch and gluten. The investigations which have been carried on upon the vitality of seeds appear to prove that, under favourable conditions, this life-germ may be maintained for centuries. Grains of wheat, which had been found in the hands of an Egyptian mummy, germinated and grew: these grains were produced, in all probability, more than three thousand years since; they had been placed, at her burial, in the hands of a priestess of Isis, and in the deep repose of the Egyptian catacomb were preserved to tell us, in the eighteenth century, the story of that wheat which Joseph sold to his brethren.

The process of germination is essentially a chemical one. The seed is placed in the soil, excluded from the light, supplied with a due quantity of moisture, and maintained at a certain temperature, which must be above that

at which water freezes; air must have free access to the seed, which, if placed so deep in the soil as to prevent the permeation of the atmosphere never germinates. Under favourable circumstances, the life-quickening processes begin; the starch, which is a compound of carbon and oxygen, is converted into sugar by the absorption of another equivalent of oxygen from the air; and we have an evident proof of this change in the sweetness which most seeds acquire in the process, the most familiar example of which we have in the conversion of barley into malt. The sugar thus formed furnishes the food to the now living creation, which, in a short period, shoots its first leaves above the soil; and these, which rising from their dark chamber are white, quickly become green under the operations of light.

In the process of germination a species of slow combustion takes place, and-as in the chemical processes of animal life and in those of active ignition-carbonic acid gas, composed of oxygen and charcoal, or carbon, is evolved. Thus, by a mystery which our science does not enable us to reach, the spark of life is kindled -life commences its work-the plant grows. The first conditions of vegetable growth are, therefore, singularly similar to those which are found to prevail in the animal economy. The leaf-bud is no sooner above the soil than a new set of conditions begin; the plant takes carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and having, in virtue of its vitality, by the agency of luminous power, decomposed this gas, it retains the carbon, and pours forth the oxygen to the air. This process is stated to be a function of vitality; but as this has been variously described by different authors, it is important to state with some minuteness what does really take place.

The plant absorbs carbonic acid from the atmosphere through the under surfaces of the leaves, and the whole of the bark; it at the same time derives an additional portion from the moisture which is taken up by the roots, and conveyed "to the topmost twig" by the force of capillary attraction, and another power, called endosmosis, which is exerted in a most striking manner by living organic tissues. This mysterious force is shown in a pleasing way by covering some spirits of wine and water in a wine-glass with a piece of bladder; the water will escape, leaving the strong spirit behind.

Independently of the action of light the plant may be regarded as a mere machine; the fluids and gases which it absorbs, pass off in a condition but very little changed

-just as water would strain through a sponge or a porous stone. The consequence of this is the blanching or etiolation of the plant, which we produce by our artificial treatment of celery and sea-kale, the formation of the carbonaceous compound called chlorophyle, which is the green colouringmatter of the leaves, being entirely checked in darkness. If such a plant is brought into the light, its dormant powers are awakened, and, instead of being little other than a sponge through which fluids circulate, it exerts most remarkable chemical powers; the carbonic acid of the air and water is decomposed; its charcoal is retained to add to the wood of the plant, and the oxygen is set free again to the atmosphere. In this process is exhibited one of the most beautiful illustrations of the harmony which prevails through all the great phenomena of nature with which we are acquainted—the mutual dependence of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

In the animal economy there is a constant production of carbonic acid, and the beautiful vegetable kingdom, spread over the earth in such infinite variety, requires this carbonic acid for its support. Constantly removing from the air the pernicious agent produced by the animal world, and giving back that oxygen which is required as the life-quickening element by the animal races, the balance of affinities is constantly maintained by the phenomena of vegetable growth. This interesting inquiry will form the subject of another essay.

The decomposition of carbonic acid is directly dependent upon luminous agency; from the impact of the earliest morning ray to the period when the sun reaches the zenith, the excitation of that vegetable vitality by which the chemical change is effected regularly increases. As the solar orb sinks towards the horizon the chemical activity diminishes-the sun sets-the action is reduced to its minimum -the plant, in the repose of darkness, passes to that state of rest which is as necessary to the vegetating races as sleep is to the wearied animal.

These are two well-marked stages in the life of a plant, germination and vegetation are exerted under different conditions; the time of flowering arrives, and another change occurs, the processes of forming the alkaline and acid juices, of producing the oil; wax, and resin, and of secreting those nitrogenous compounds which are found in the seed, are in full activity. Carbonic acid is now evolved and oxygen is retained; hydrogen and nitrogen are also forced, as it were, into combination

with the oxygen and carbon, and altogether new and more complicated operations are in activity.

Such are the phenomena of vegetable life which the researches of our philosophers have developed. This curious order-this regular progression-showing itself at well-marked epochs, is now known to be dependent upon solar influences; the

"Bright effluence of bright essence increate " works its mysterious wonders on every organic form. Much is still involved in mystery; but to the call of science some strange truths have been made manifest to man, and of some of these the phenomena must now be explained.

Germination is a chemical change which takes place most readily in darkness; vegetable growth is due to the secretion of carbon under the agency of light; and the processes of floriation are shown to involve some new and compound operations: these three states must be distinctly appreciated.

The sunbeam comes to us as a flood of pellucid light, usually colourless; if we disturb this white beam, as by compelling it to pass through a triangular piece of glass, we break it up into coloured bands, which we call the spectrum, in which we have such an order of chromatic rays as are seen in the rainbow of a summer shower. These coloured rays are now known to be the sources of all the tints by which nature adorns the surface of the earth, or art imitates, in its desire to create the beautiful. These coloured bands have not the same illuminating power, nor do they possess the same heat-giving property. The yellow rays give the most LIGHT; the red rays have the function of HEAT in the highest degree. Beyond these properties the sunbeam possesses another, which is the power of producing CHEMICAL CHANGE of effecting those magical results which we witness in the photographic processes, by which the beams illuminating any object are made to delineate it upon the prepared tablet of the artist.

It has been suspected that these three phenomena are not due to the same agency, but that, associated in the sunbeam, we have LIGHT, producing all the blessings of vision, and throwing the veil of colour over all things -HEAT, maintaining that temperature over our globe which is necessary to the perfection of living organisms--and a third principle, ACTINISM, by which the chemical changes alluded to are effected. We possess the power, by the use of coloured media, of separating these principles from each other, and of analyzing