The view I am about to state is no mere personal opinion of my own. To my present standpoint I have been led by the investigations of such masters as Drs Wundt, Lehmann, Preuss, Bergson, Beck and in our own country Drs Tylor and Frazer. (I can only name here the books that have specially influenced my own views. They are W. Wundt, "Volkerpsychologie", Leipzig, 1900, P. Beck, "Die Nachahmung", Leipzig, 1904, and "Erkenntnisstheorie des primitiven Denkens" in "Zeitschrift f. Philos. und Philos. Kritik", 1903, page 172, and 1904, page 9. Henri Bergson, "L'Evolution Creatrice" and "Matiere et Memoire", 1908, K. Th. Preuss, various articles published in the "Globus" (see page 507, note 1), and in the "Archiv. f. Religionswissenschaft", and for the subject of magic, MM. Hubert et Mauss, "Theorie generale de la Magie", in "L'Annee Sociologique", VII.)

Religion always contains two factors. First, a theoretical factor, what a man THINKS about the unseen--his theology, or, if we prefer so to call it, his mythology. Second, what he DOES in relation to this unseen--his ritual. These factors rarely if ever occur in complete separation; they are blended in very varying proportions. Religion we have seen was in the last century regarded mainly in its theoretical aspect as a doctrine. Greek religion for example meant to most educated persons Greek mythology. Yet even a cursory examination shows that neither Greek nor Roman had any creed or dogma, any hard and fast formulation of belief. In the Greek Mysteries (See my "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion", page 155, Cambridge, 1903.) only we find what we should call a Confiteor; and this is not a confession of faith, but an avowal of rites performed. When the religion of primitive peoples came to be examined it was speedily seen that though vague beliefs necessarily abound, definite creeds are practically non-existent. Ritual is dominant and imperative.

This predominance and priority of ritual over definite creed was first forced upon our notice by the study of savages, but it promptly and happily joined hands with modern psychology. Popular belief says, I think, therefore I act; modern scientific psychology says, I act (or rather, REact to outside stimulus), and so I come to think. Thus there is set going a recurrent series: act and thought become in their turn stimuli to fresh acts and thoughts. In examining religion as envisaged to-day it would therefore be more correct to begin with the practice of religion, i.e. ritual, and then pass to its theory, theology or mythology. But it will be more convenient to adopt the reverse method. The theoretical content of religion is to those of us who are Protestants far more familiar and we shall thus proceed from the known to the comparatively unknown.

I shall avoid all attempt at rigid definition. The problem before the modern investigator is, not to determine the essence and definition of religion but to inquire how religious phenomena, religious ideas and practices arose. Now the theoretical content of religion, the domain of theology or mythology, is broadly familiar to all. It is the world of the unseen, the supersensuous; it is the world of what we call the soul and the supposed objects of the soul's perception, sprites, demons, ghosts and gods. How did this world grow up?

We turn to our savages. Intelligent missionaries of bygone days used to ply savages with questions such as these: Had they any belief in God? Did they believe in the immortality of the soul? Taking their own clear-cut conceptions, discriminated by a developed terminology, these missionaries tried to translate them into languages that had neither the words nor the thoughts, only a vague, inchoate, tangled substratum, out of which these thoughts and words later differentiated themselves. Let us examine this substratum.

Nowadays we popularly distinguish between objective and subjective; and further, we regard the two worlds as in some sense opposed. To the objective world we commonly attribute some reality independent of consciousness, while we think of the subjective as dependent for its existence on the mind. The objective world consists of perceptible things, or of the ultimate constituents to which matter is reduced by physical speculation. The subjective world is the world of beliefs, hallucinations, dreams, abstract ideas, imaginations and the like. Psychology of course knows that the objective and subjective worlds are interdependent, inextricably intertwined, but for practical purposes the distinction is convenient.

But primitive man has not yet drawn the distinction between objective and subjective. Nay, more, it is foreign to almost the whole of ancient philosophy. Plato's Ideas (I owe this psychological analysis of the elements of the primitive supersensuous world mainly to Dr Beck, "Erkenntnisstheorie des primitiven Denkens", see page 498, note 1.), his Goodness, Truth, Beauty, his class-names, horse, table, are it is true dematerialised as far as possible, but they have outside existence, apart from the mind of the thinker, they have in some shadowy way spatial extension. Yet ancient philosophies and primitive man alike needed and possessed for practical purposes a distinction which served as well as our subjective and objective. To the primitive savage all his thoughts, every object of which he was conscious, whether by perception or conception, had reality, that is, it had existence outside himself, but it might have reality of various kinds or different degrees.

It is not hard to see how this would happen. A man's senses may mislead him. He sees the reflection of a bird in a pond. To his eyes it is a real bird. He touches it, HE PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH, and to his touch it is not a bird at all. It is real then, but surely not quite so real as a bird that you can touch. Again, he sees smoke. It is real to his eyes. He tries to grasp it, it vanishes. The wind touches him, but he cannot see it, which makes him feel uncanny. The most real thing is that which affects most senses and especially what affects the sense of touch. Apparently touch is the deepest down, most primitive, of senses. The rest are specialisations and complications. Primitive man has no formal rubric "optical delusion," but he learns practically to distinguish between things that affect only one sense and things that affect two or more--if he did not he would not survive. But both classes of things are real to him. Percipi est esse.

So far, primitive man has made a real observation; there are things that appeal to one sense only. But very soon creeps in confusion fraught with disaster. He passes naturally enough, being economical of any mental effort, from what he really sees but cannot feel to what he thinks he sees, and gives to it the same secondary reality. He has dreams, visions, hallucinations, nightmares. He dreams that an enemy is beating him, and he wakes rubbing his head. Then further he remembers things; that is, for him, he sees them. A great chief died the other day and they buried him, but he sees him still in his mind, sees him in his war-paint, splendid, victorious. So the image of the past goes together with his dreams and visions to the making of this other less real, but still real world, his other-world of the supersensuous, the supernatural, a world, the outside existence of which, independent of himself, he never questions.

And, naturally enough, the future joins the past in this supersensuous world. He can hope, he can imagine, he can prophesy. And again the images of his hope are real; he sees them with that mind's eye which as yet he has not distinguished from his bodily eye. And so the supersensuous world grows and grows big with the invisible present, and big also with the past and the future, crowded with the ghosts of the dead and shadowed with oracles and portents. It is this supersensuous, supernatural world which is the eternity, the other-world, of primitive religion, not an endlessness of time, but a state removed from full sensuous reality, a world in which anything and everything may happen, a world peopled by demonic ancestors and liable to a splendid vagueness, to a "once upon a time-ness" denied to the present. It not unfrequently happens that people who know that the world nowadays obeys fixed laws have no difficulty in believing that six thousand years ago man was made direct from a lump of clay, and woman was made from one of man's superfluous ribs.

The fashioning of the supersensuous world comes out very clearly in primitive man's views about the soul and life after death. Herbert Spencer noted long ago the influence of dreams in forming a belief in immortality, but being very rational himself, he extended to primitive man a quite alien quality of rationality. Herbert Spencer argued that when a savage has a dream he seeks to account for it, and in so doing invents a spirit world. The mistake here lies in the "seeks to account for it." (Primitive man, as Dr Beck observes, is not impelled by an Erkenntnisstrieb. Dr Beck says he has counted upwards of 30 of these mythological Triebe (tendencies) with which primitive man has been endowed.) Man is at first too busy LIVING to have any time for disinterested THINKING. He dreams a dream and it is real for him. He does not seek to account for it any more than for his hands and feet. He cannot distinguish between a CONception and a PERception, that is all. He remembers his ancestors or they appear to him in a dream; therefore they are alive still, but only as a rule to about the third generation. Then he remembers them no more and they cease to be.

Next as regards his own soul. He feels something within him, his life- power, his will to live, his power to act, his personality--whatever we like to call it. He cannot touch this thing that is himself, but it is real. His friend too is alive and one day he is dead; he cannot move, he cannot act. Well, something has gone that was his friend's self. He has stopped breathing. Was it his breath? or he is bleeding; is it his blood? This life-power IS something; does it live in his heart or his lungs or his midriff? He did not see it go; perhaps it is like wind, an anima, a Geist, a ghost. But again it comes back in a dream, only looking shadowy; it is not the man's life, it is a thin copy of the man; it is an "image" (eidolon). It is like that shifting distorted thing that dogs the living man's footsteps in the sunshine; it is a "shade" (skia). (The two conceptions of the soul, as a life-essence, inseparable from the body, and as a separable phantom seem to occur in most primitive systems. They are distinct conceptions but are inextricably blended in savage thought. The two notions Korperseele and Psyche have been very fully discussed in Wundt's "Volkerpsychologie" II. pages 1-142, Leipzig, 1900.)

Ghosts and sprites, ancestor worship, the soul, oracles, prophecy; all these elements of the primitive supersensuous world we willingly admit to be the proper material of religion; but other elements are more surprising; such are class-names, abstract ideas, numbers, geometrical figures. We do not nowadays think of these as of religious content, but to primitive men they were all part of the furniture of his supernatural world.

With respect to class-names, Dr Tylor ("Primitive Culture", Vol. II. page 245 (4th edition), 1903.) has shown how instructive are the first attempts of the savage to get at the idea of a class. Things in which similarity is observed, things indeed which can be related at all are to the savage KINDRED. A species is a family or a number of individuals with a common god to look after them. Such for example is the Finn doctrine of the haltia. Every object has its haltia, but the haltiat were not tied to the individual, they interested themselves in every member of the species. Each stone had its haltia, but that haltia was interested in other stones; the individuals disappeared, the haltia remained.

Nor was it only class-names that belonged to the supersensuous world. A man's own proper-name is a sort of spiritual essence of him, a kind of soul to be carefully concealed. By pronouncing a name you bring the thing itself into being. When Elohim would create Day "he called out to the Light 'Day,' and to the Darkness he called out 'Night'"; the great magician pronounced the magic Names and the Things came into being. "In the beginning was the Word" is literally true, and this reflects the fact that our CONCEPTUAL world comes into being by the mental process of naming. (For a full discussion of this point see Beck, "Nachahmung" page 41, "Die Sprache".) In old times people went further; they thought that by naming events they could bring them to be, and custom even to-day keeps up the inveterate magical habit of wishing people "Good Morning" and a "Happy Christmas."

Number, too, is part of the supersensuous world that is thoroughly religious. We can see and touch seven apples, but seven itself, that wonderful thing that shifts from object to object, giving it its SEVENness, that living thing, for it begets itself anew in multiplication--surely seven is a fit denizen of the upper-world. Originally all numbers dwelt there, and a certain supersensuous sanctity still clings to seven and three. We still say "Holy, Holy, Holy," and in some mystic way feel the holier.

The soul and the supersensuous world get thinner and thinner, rarer and more rarified, but they always trail behind them clouds of smoke and vapour from the world of sense and space whence they have come. It is difficult for us even nowadays to use the word "soul" without lapsing into a sensuous mythology. The Cartesians' sharp distinction between res extensa non cogitans and res cogitans non extansa is remote.

So far then man, through the processes of his thinking, has provided himself with a supersensuous world, the world of sense-delusion, of smoke and cloud, of dream and phantom, of imagination, of name and number and image. The natural course would now seem to be that this supersensuous world should develop into the religious world as we know it, that out of a vague animism with ghosts of ancestors, demons, and the like, there should develop in due order momentary gods (Augenblicks-Gotter), tribal gods, polytheism, and finally a pure monotheism.

This course of development is usually assumed, but it is not I think quite what really happens. The supersensuous world as we have got it so far is too theoretic to be complete material of religion. It is indeed only one factor, or rather it is as it were a lifeless body that waits for a living spirit to possess and inform it. Had the theoretic factor remained uninformed it would eventually have separated off into its constituent elements of error and truth, the error dying down as a belated metaphysic, the truth developing into a correct and scientific psychology of the subjective. But man has ritual as well as mythology; that is, he feels and acts as well as thinks; nay more he probably feels and acts long before he definitely thinks. This contradicts all our preconceived notions of theology. Man, we imagine, believes in a god or gods and then worships. The real order seems to be that, in a sense presently to be explained, he worships, he feels and acts, and out of his feeling and action, projected into his confused thinking, he develops a god. We pass therefore to our second factor in religion:--ritual.

The word "ritual" brings to our modern minds the notion of a church with a priesthood and organised services. Instinctively we think of a congregation meeting to confess sins, to receive absolution, to pray, to praise, to listen to sermons, and possibly to partake of sacraments. Were we to examine these fully developed phenomena we should hardly get further in the analysis of our religious conceptions than the notion of a highly anthropomorphic god approached by purely human methods of personal entreaty and adulation.

Further, when we first come to the study of primitive religions we expect a priori to find the same elements, though in a ruder form. We expect to see "The heathen in his blindness bow down to wood and stone," but the facts that actually confront us are startlingly dissimilar. Bowing down to wood and stone is an occupation that exists mainly in the minds of hymn-writers. The real savage is more actively engaged. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters spells. In a word he is busy practising magic, and above all he is strenuously engaged in dancing magical dances. When the savage wants rain or wind or sunshine, he does not go to church; he summons his tribe and they dance a rain-dance or wind-dance or sun-dance. When a savage goes to war we must not picture his wife on her knees at home praying for the absent; instead we must picture her dancing the whole night long; not for mere joy of heart or to pass the weary hours; she is dancing his war-dance to bring him victory.

Magic is nowadays condemned alike by science and by religion; it is both useless and impious. It is obsolete, and only practised by malign sorcerers in obscure holes and corners. Undoubtedly magic is neither religion nor science, but in all probability it is the spiritual protoplasm from which religion and science ultimately differentiated. As such the doctrine of evolution bids us scan it closely. Magic may be malign and private; nowadays it is apt to be both. But in early days magic was as much for good as for evil; it was publicly practised for the common weal.

The gist of magic comes out most clearly in magical dances. We think of dancing as a light form of recreation, practised by the young from sheer joie de vivre and unsuitable for the mature. But among the Tarahumares (Carl Lumholtz, "Unknown Mexico", page 330, London, 1903.) in Mexico the word for dancing, nolavoa, means "to work." Old men will reproach young men saying "Why do you not go to work?" meaning why do you not dance instead of only looking on. The chief religious sin of which the Tarahumare is conscious is that he has not danced enough and not made enough tesvino, his cereal intoxicant.

Dancing then is to the savage WORKING, DOING, and the dance is in its origin an imitation or perhaps rather an intensification of processes of work. (Karl Bucher, "Arbeit und Rhythmus", Leipzig (3rd edition), 1902, passim.) Repetition, regular and frequent, constitutes rhythm and rhythm heightens the sense of will power in action. Rhythmical action may even, as seen in the dances of Dervishes, produce a condition of ecstasy. Ecstasy among primitive peoples is a condition much valued; it is often, though not always, enhanced by the use of intoxicants. Psychologically the savage starts from the sense of his own will power, he stimulates it by every means at his command. Feeling his will strongly and knowing nothing of natural law he recognises no limits to his own power; he feels himself a magician, a god; he does not pray, he WILLS. Moreover he wills collectively (The subject of collective hallucination as an element in magic has been fully worked out by MM. Hubert and Mauss. "Theorie generale de la Magie", In "L'Annee Sociologique", 1902--3, page 140.), reinforced by the will and action of his whole tribe. Truly of him it may be said "La vie deborde l'intelligence, l'intelligence c'est un retrecissement." (Henri Bergson, "L'Evolution Creatrice", page 50.)

The magical extension and heightening of personality come out very clearly in what are rather unfortunately known as MIMETIC dances. Animal dances occur very frequently among primitive peoples. The dancers dress up as birds, beasts, or fishes, and reproduce the characteristic movements and habits of the animals impersonated. So characteristic is this impersonation in magical dancing that among the Mexicans the word for magic, navali, means "disguise." K. Th. Preuss, "Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft", 1906, page 97.) A very common animal dance is the frog-dance. When it rains the frogs croak. If you desire rain you dress up like a frog and croak and jump. We think of such a performance as a conscious imitation. The man, we think, is more or less LIKE a frog. That is not how primitive man thinks; indeed, he scarcely thinks at all; what HE wants done the frog can do by croaking and jumping, so he croaks and jumps and, for all he can, BECOMES a frog. "L'intelligence animale JOUE sans doute les representations plutot qu'elle ne les pense." (Bergson, "L'Evolution Creatrice", page 205.)

We shall best understand this primitive state of mind if we study the child "born in sin." If a child is "playing at lions" he does not IMITATE a lion, i.e. he does not consciously try to be a thing more or less like a lion, he BECOMES one. His reaction, his terror, is the same as if the real lion were there. It is this childlike power of utter impersonation, of BEING the thing we act or even see acted, this extension and intensification of our own personality that lives deep down in all of us and is the very seat and secret of our joy in the drama.

A child's mind is indeed throughout the best clue to the understanding of savage magic. A young and vital child knows no limit to his own will, and it is the only reality to him. It is not that he wants at the outset to fight other wills, but that they simply do not exist for him. Like the artist he goes forth to the work of creation, gloriously alone. His attitude towards other recalcitrant wills is "they simply must." Let even a grown man be intoxicated, be in love, or subject to an intense excitement, the limitations of personality again fall away. Like the omnipotent child he is again a god, and to him all things are possible. Only when he is old and weary does he cease to command fate.

The Iroquois (Hewitt, "American Anthropologist", IV. I. page 32, 1902, N.S.) of North America have a word, orenda, the meaning of which is easier to describe than to define, but it seems to express the very soul of magic. This orenda is your power to do things, your force, sometimes almost your personality. A man who hunts well has much and good orenda; the shy bird who escapes his snares has a fine orenda. The orenda of the rabbit controls the snow and fixes the depth to which it will fall. When a storm is brewing the magician is said to be making its orenda. When you yourself are in a rage, great is your orenda. The notes of birds are utterances of their orenda. When the maize is ripening, the Iroquois know it is the sun's heat that ripens it, but they know more; it is the cigala makes the sun to shine and he does it by chirping, by uttering his orenda. This orenda is sometimes very like the Greek thumos, your bodily life, your vigour, your passion, your power, the virtue that is in you to feel and do. This notion of orenda, a sort of pan-vitalism, is more fluid than animism, and probably precedes it. It is the projection of man's inner experience, vague and unanalysed, into the outer world.

The mana of the Melanesians (Codrington, "The Melanesians", pages 118, 119, 192, Oxford, 1891.) is somewhat more specialised--all men do not possess mana--but substantially it is the same idea. Mana is not only a force, it is also an action, a quality, a state, at once a substantive, an adjective, and a verb. It is very closely neighboured by the idea of sanctity. Things that have mana are tabu. Like orenda it manifests itself in noises, but specially mysterious ones, it is mana that is rustling in the trees. Mana is highly contagious, it can pass from a holy stone to a man or even to his shadow if it cross the stone. "All Melanesian religion," Dr Codrington says, "consists in getting mana for oneself or getting it used for one's benefit." (Codrington, "The Melanesians", page 120, Oxford, 1891.)

Specially instructive is a word in use among the Omaka (See Prof. Haddon, "Magic and Fetishism", page 60, London, 1906. Dr Vierkandt ("Globus", July, 1907, page 41) thinks that "Fernzauber" is a later development from Nahzauber.), wazhin-dhedhe, "directive energy, to send." This word means roughly what we should call telepathy, sending out your thought or will- power to influence another and affect his action. Here we seem to get light on what has always been a puzzle, the belief in magic exercised at a distance. For the savage will, distance is practically non-existent, his intense desire feels itself as non-spatial. (This notion of mana, orenda, wazhin-dhedhe and the like lives on among civilised peoples in such words as the Vedic brahman in the neuter, familiar to us in its masculine form Brahman. The neuter, brahman, means magic power of a rite, a rite itself, formula, charm, also first principle, essence of the universe. It is own cousin to the Greek dunamis and phusis. See MM. Hubert et Mauss, "Theorie generale de la Magie", page 117, in "L'Annee Sociologique", VII.)

Through the examination of primitive ritual we have at last got at one tangible, substantial factor in religion, a real live experience, the sense, that is, of will, desire, power actually experienced in person by the individual, and by him projected, extended into the rest of the world.

At this stage it may fairly be asked, though the question cannot with any certainty be answered, "at what point in the evolution of man does this religious experience come in?"

So long as an organism reacts immediately to outside stimulus, with a certainty and conformity that is almost chemical, there is, it would seem, no place, no possibility for magical experience. But when the germ appears of an intellect that can foresee an end not immediately realised, or rather when a desire arises that we feel and recognise as not satisfied, then comes in the sense of will and the impulse magically to intensify that will. The animal it would seem is preserved by instinct from drawing into his horizon things which do not immediately subserve the conservation of his species. But the moment man's life-power began to make on the outside world demands not immediately and inevitably realised in action (I owe this observation to Dr K. Th. Preuss. He writes ("Archiv f. Relig." 1906, page 98), "Die Betonung des Willens in den Zauberakten ist der richtige Kern. In der Tat muss der Mensch den Willen haben, sich selbst und seiner Umgebung besondere Fahigkeiten zuzuschreiben, und den Willen hat er, sobald sein Verstand ihn befahigt, EINE UBER DEN INSTINKT HINAUSGEHEN DER FURSORGE fur sich zu zeigen. SO LANGE IHN DER INSTINKT ALLEIN LEITET, KONNEN ZAUBERHANDLUNGEN NICHT ENSTEHEN." For more detailed analysis of the origin of magic, see Dr Preuss "Ursprung der Religion und Kunst", "Globus", LXXXVI. and LXXXVII.), then a door was opened to magic, and in the train of magic followed errors innumerable, but also religion, philosophy, science and art.

The world of mana, orenda, brahman is a world of feeling, desiring, willing, acting. What element of thinking there may be in it is not yet differentiated out. But we have already seen that a supersensuous world of thought grew up very early in answer to other needs, a world of sense- illusions, shadows, dreams, souls, ghosts, ancestors, names, numbers, images, a world only wanting as it were the impulse of mana to live as a religion. Which of the two worlds, the world of thinking or the world of doing, developed first it is probably idle to inquire. (If external stimuli leave on organisms a trace or record such as is known as an Engram, this physical basis of memory and hence of thought is almost coincident with reaction of the most elementary kind. See Mr Francis Darwin's Presidential Address to the British Association, Dublin, 1908, page 8, and again Bergson places memory at the very root of conscious existence, see "L'Evolution Creatrice", page 18, "le fond meme de notre existence consciente est memoire, c'est a dire prolongation du passee dans le present," and again "la duree mord dans le temps et y laisse l'enpreint de son dent," and again, "l'Evolution implique une continuation reelle du passee par le present.")

It is more important to ask, Why do these two worlds join? Because, it would seem, mana, the egomaniac or megalomaniac element, cannot get satisfied with real things, and therefore goes eagerly out to a false world, the supersensuous other-world whose growth we have sketched. This junction of the two is fact, not fancy. Among all primitive peoples dead men, ghosts, spirits of all kinds, become the chosen vehicle of mana. Even to this day it is sometimes urged that religion, i.e. belief in the immortality of the soul, is true "because it satisfies the deepest craving of human nature." The two worlds, of mana and magic on the one hand, of ghosts and other-world on the other, combine so easily because they have the same laws, or rather the same comparative absence of law. As in the world of dreams and ghosts, so in the world of mana, space and time offer no obstacles; with magic all things are possible. In the one world what you imagine is real; in the other what you desire is ipso facto accomplished. Both worlds are egocentric, megalomaniac, filled to the full with unbridled human will and desire.

We are all of us born in sin, in that sin which is to science "the seventh and deadliest," anthropomorphism, we are egocentric, ego-projective. Hence necessarily we make our gods in our own image. Anthropomorphism is often spoken of in books on religion and mythology as if it were a last climax, a splendid final achievement in religious thought. First, we are told, we have the lifeless object as god (fetichism), then the plant or animal (phytomorphism, theriomorphism), and last God is incarnate in the human form divine. This way of putting things is misleading. Anthropomorphism lies at the very beginning of our consciousness. Man's first achievement in thought is to realise that there is anything at all not himself, any object to his subject. When he has achieved however dimly this distinction, still for long, for very long he can only think of those other things in terms of himself; plants and animals are people with ways of their own, stronger or weaker than himself but to all intents and purposes human.

We have gained also a language and a habit of thought more fit for the great and dark problems that remain, less liable to damaging conflicts, equipped for more rapid assimilation of knowledge. And by this change biology itself is a gainer. For, relieved of fruitless encounters with popular religion, it may advance with surer aim along the path of really scientific life-study which was reopened for modern men by the publication of "The Origin of Species".

Charles Darwin regretted that, in following science, he had not done "more direct good" ("Life and Letters", Vol. III. page 359.) to his fellow- creatures. He has, in fact, rendered substantial service to interests bound up with the daily conduct and hopes of common men; for his work has led to improvements in the preaching of the Christian faith.

XXV. THE INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM ON THE STUDY OF RELIGIONS.

By JANE ELLEN HARRISON. Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen), Staff Lecturer and sometime Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute.

The title of my paper might well have been "the creation by Darwinism of the scientific study of Religions," but that I feared to mar my tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration. Before the publication of "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man", even in the eighteenth century, isolated thinkers, notably Hume and Herder, had conjectured that the orthodox beliefs of their own day were developments from the cruder superstitions of the past. These were however only particular speculations of individual sceptics. Religion was not yet generally regarded as a proper subject for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be deduced. A Congress of Religions such as that recently held at Oxford would have savoured of impiety.

In the brief space allotted me I can attempt only two things; first, and very briefly, I shall try to indicate the normal attitude towards religion in the early part of the last century; second, and in more detail, I shall try to make clear what is the outlook of advanced thinkers to-day. (To be accurate I ought to add "in Europe." I advisedly omit from consideration the whole immense field of Oriental mysticism, because it has remained practically untouched by the influence of Darwinism.) From this second inquiry it will, I hope, be abundantly manifest that it is the doctrine of evolution that has made this outlook possible and even necessary.

The ultimate and unchallenged presupposition of the old view was that religion was a DOCTRINE, a body of supposed truths. It was in fact what we should now call Theology, and what the ancients called Mythology. Ritual was scarcely considered at all, and, when considered, it was held to be a form in which beliefs, already defined and fixed as dogma, found a natural mode of expression. This, it will be later shown, is a profound error or rather a most misleading half-truth. Creeds, doctrines, theology and the like are only a part, and at first the least important part, of religion.

Further, and the fact is important, this DOGMA, thus supposed to be the essential content of the "true" religion, was a teleological scheme complete and unalterable, which had been revealed to man once and for all by a highly anthropomorphic God, whose existence was assumed. The duty of man towards this revelation was to accept its doctrines and obey its precepts. The notion that this revelation had grown bit by bit out of man's consciousness and that his business was to better it would have seemed rank blasphemy. Religion, so conceived, left no place for development. "The Truth" might be learnt, but never critically examined; being thus avowedly complete and final, it was doomed to stagnation.

The details of this supposed revelation seem almost too naive for enumeration. As Hume observed, "popular theology has a positive appetite for absurdity." It is sufficient to recall that "revelation" included such items as the Creation (It is interesting to note that the very word "Creator" has nowadays almost passed into the region of mythology. Instead we have "L'Evolution Creatrice".) of the world out of nothing in six days; the making of Eve from one of Adam's ribs; the Temptation by a talking snake; the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel; the doctrine of Original Sin; a scheme of salvation which demanded the Virgin Birth, Vicarious Atonement, and the Resurrection of the material body. The scheme was unfolded in an infallible Book, or, for one section of Christians, guarded by the tradition of an infallible Church, and on the acceptance or refusal of this scheme depended an eternity of weal or woe. There is not one of these doctrines that has not now been recast, softened down, mysticised, allegorised into something more conformable with modern thinking. It is hard for the present generation, unless their breeding has been singularly archaic, to realise that these amazing doctrines were literally held and believed to constitute the very essence of religion; to doubt them was a moral delinquency.

It had not, however, escaped the notice of travellers and missionaries that savages carried on some sort of practices that seemed to be religious, and believed in some sort of spirits or demons. Hence, beyond the confines illuminated by revealed truth, a vague region was assigned to NATURAL Religion. The original revelation had been kept intact only by one chosen people, the Jews, by them to be handed on to Christianity. Outside the borders of this Goshen the world had sunk into the darkness of Egypt. Where analogies between savage cults and the Christian religions were observed, they were explained as degradations; the heathen had somehow wilfully "lost the light." Our business was not to study but, exclusively, to convert them, to root out superstition and carry the torch of revelation to "Souls in heathen darkness lying." To us nowadays it is a commonplace of anthropological research that we must seek for the beginnings of religion in the religions of primitive peoples, but in the last century the orthodox mind was convinced that it possessed a complete and luminous ready-made revelation; the study of what was held to be a mere degradation seemed idle and superfluous.

But, it may be asked, if, to the orthodox, revealed religion was sacrosanct and savage religion a thing beneath consideration, why did not the sceptics show a more liberal spirit, and pursue to their logical issue the conjectures they had individually hazarded? The reason is simple and significant. The sceptics too had not worked free from the presupposition that the essence of religion is dogma. Their intellectualism, expressive of the whole eighteenth century, was probably in England strengthened by the Protestant doctrine of an infallible Book. Hume undoubtedly confused religion with dogmatic theology. The attention of orthodox and sceptics alike was focussed on the truth or falsity of certain propositions. Only a few minds of rare quality were able dimly to conceive that religion might be a necessary step in the evolution of human thought.

It is not a little interesting to note that Darwin, who was leader and intellectual king of his generation, was also in this matter to some extent its child. His attitude towards religion is stated clearly, in Chapter VIII. of the "Life and Letters". (Vol. I. page 304. For Darwin's religious views see also "Descent of Man", 1871, Vol. I. page 65; 2nd edition. Vol. I. page 142.) On board the "Beagle" he was simply orthodox and was laughed at by several of the officers for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. By 1839 he had come to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. Next went the belief in miracles, and next Paley's "argument from design" broke down before the law of natural selection; the suffering so manifest in nature is seen to be compatible rather with Natural Selection than with the goodness and omnipotence of God. Darwin felt to the full all the ignorance that lay hidden under specious phrases like "the plan of creation" and "Unity of design." Finally, he tells us "the mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

The word Agnostic is significant not only of the humility of the man himself but also of the attitude of his age. Religion, it is clear, is still conceived as something to be KNOWN, a matter of true or false OPINION. Orthodox religion was to Darwin a series of erroneous hypotheses to be bit by bit discarded when shown to be untenable. The ACTS of religion which may result from such convictions, i.e. devotion in all its forms, prayer, praise, sacraments, are left unmentioned. It is clear that they are not, as now to us, sociological survivals of great interest and importance, but rather matters too private, too personal, for discussion.

Huxley, writing in the "Contemporary Review" (1871.), says, "In a dozen years "The Origin of Species" has worked as complete a revolution in biological science as the "Principia" did in astronomy." It has done so because, in the words of Helmholtz, it contained "an essentially new creative thought," that of the continuity of life, the absence of breaks. In the two most conservative subjects, Religion and Classics, this creative ferment was slow indeed to work. Darwin himself felt strongly "that a man should not publish on a subject to which he has not given special and continuous thought," and hence wrote little on religion and with manifest reluctance, though, as already seen, in answer to pertinacious inquiry he gave an outline of his own views. But none the less he foresaw that his doctrine must have, for the history of man's mental evolution, issues wider than those with which he was prepared personally to deal. He writes, in "The Origin of Species" (6th edition, page 428.), "In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation."

Nowhere, it is true, does Darwin definitely say that he regarded religion as a set of phenomena, the development of which may be studied from the psychological standpoint. Rather we infer from his PIETY--in the beautiful Roman sense--towards tradition and association, that religion was to him in some way sacrosanct. But it is delightful to see how his heart went out towards the new method in religious study which he had himself, if half- unconsciously, inaugurated. Writing in 1871 to Dr Tylor, on the publication of his "Primitive Culture", he says ("Life and Letters", Vol. III. page 151.), "It is wonderful how you trace animism from the lower races up the religious belief of the highest races. It will make me for the future look at religion--a belief in the soul, etc.--from a new point of view."

Psychology was henceforth to be based on "the necessary acquirement of each mental capacity by gradation." With these memorable words the door closes on the old and opens on the new horizon. The mental focus henceforth is not on the maintaining or refuting of an orthodoxy but on the genesis and evolution of a capacity, not on perfection but on process. Continuous evolution leaves no gap for revelation sudden and complete. We have henceforth to ask, not when was religion revealed or what was the revelation, but how did religious phenomena arise and develop. For an answer to this we turn with new and reverent eyes to study "the heathen in his blindness" and the child "born in sin." We still indeed send out missionaries to convert the heathen, but here at least in Cambridge before they start they attend lectures on anthropology and comparative religion. The "decadence" theory is dead and should be buried.

The Middle Ages had no suspicion that religious faith forbad inquiry into the natural origination of the different forms of life. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, an English Franciscan of the thirteenth century, was a mutationist in his way, as Aristotle, "the Philosopher" of the Christian Schoolmen, had been in his. So late as the seventeenth century, as we learn not only from early proceedings of the Royal Society, but from a writer so homely and so regularly pious as Walton, the variation of species and "spontaneous" generations had no theological bearing, except as instances of that various wonder of the world which in devout minds is food for devotion.

It was in the eighteenth century that the harder statement took shape. Something in the preciseness of that age, its exaltation of law, its cold passion for a stable and measured universe, its cold denial, its cold affirmation of the power of God, a God of ice, is the occasion of that rigidity of religious thought about the living world which Darwin by accident challenged, or rather by one of those movements of genius which, Goethe ("No productiveness of the highest kind...is in the power of anyone."--"Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret". London, 1850.) declares, are "elevated above all earthly control."

If religious thought in the eighteenth century was aimed at a fixed and nearly finite world of spirit, it followed in all these respects the secular and critical lead. ("La philosophie reformatrice du XVIIIe siecle (Berthelot, "Evolutionisme et Platonisme", Paris, 1908, page 45.) ramenait la nature et la societe a des mecanismes que la pensee reflechie peut concevoir et recomposer." In fact, religion in a mechanical age is condemned if it takes any but a mechanical tone. Butler's thought was too moving, too vital, too evolutionary, for the sceptics of his time. In a rationalist, encyclopaedic period, religion also must give hard outline to its facts, it must be able to display its secret to any sensible man in the language used by all sensible men. Milton's prophetic genius furnished the eighteenth century, out of the depth of the passionate age before it, with the theological tone it was to need. In spite of the austere magnificence of his devotion, he gives to smaller souls a dangerous lead. The rigidity of Scripture exegesis belonged to this stately but imperfectly sensitive mode of thought. It passed away with the influence of the older rationalists whose precise denials matched the precise and limited affirmations of the static orthodoxy.

I shall, then, leave the specially biblical aspect of the debate-- interesting as it is and even useful, as in Huxley's correspondence with the Duke of Argyll and others in 1892 ("Times", 1892, passim.)--in order to consider without complication the permanent elements of Christian thought brought into question by the teaching of evolution.

Such permanent elements are the doctrine of God as Creator of the universe, and the doctrine of man as spiritual and unique. Upon both the doctrine of evolution seemed to fall with crushing force.

With regard to Man I leave out, acknowledging a grave omission, the doctrine of the Fall and of Sin. And I do so because these have not yet, as I believe, been adequately treated: here the fruitful reaction to the stimulus of evolution is yet to come. The doctrine of sin, indeed, falls principally within the scope of that discussion which has followed or displaced the Darwinian; and without it the Fall cannot be usefully considered. For the question about the Fall is a question not merely of origins, but of the interpretation of moral facts whose moral reality must first be established.

I confine myself therefore to Creation and the dignity of man.

The meaning of evolution, in the most general terms, is that the differentiation of forms is not essentially separate from their behaviour and use; that if these are within the scope of study, that is also; that the world has taken the form we see by movements not unlike those we now see in progress; that what may be called proximate origins are continuous in the way of force and matter, continuous in the way of life, with actual occurrences and actual characteristics. All this has no revolutionary bearing upon the question of ultimate origins. The whole is a statement about process. It says nothing to metaphysicians about cause. It simply brings within the scope of observation or conjecture that series of changes which has given their special characters to the different parts of the world we see. In particular, evolutionary science aspires to the discovery of the process or order of the appearance of life itself: if it were to achieve its aim it could say nothing of the cause of this or indeed of the most familiar occurrences. We should have become spectators or convinced historians of an event which, in respect of its cause and ultimate meaning, would be still impenetrable.

With regard to the origin of species, supposing life already established, biological science has the well founded hopes and the measure of success with which we are all familiar. All this has, it would seem, little chance of collision with a consistent theism, a doctrine which has its own difficulties unconnected with any particular view of order or process. But when it was stated that species had arisen by processes through which new species were still being made, evolutionism came into collision with a statement, traditionally religious, that species were formed and fixed once for all and long ago.

What is the theological import of such a statement when it is regarded as essential to belief in God? Simply that God's activity, with respect to the formation of living creatures, ceased at some point in past time.

"God rested" is made the touchstone of orthodoxy. And when, under the pressure of the evidences, we found ourselves obliged to acknowledge and assert the present and persistent power of God, in the maintenance and in the continued formation of "types," what happened was the abolition of a time-limit. We were forced only to a bolder claim, to a theistic language less halting, more consistent, more thorough in its own line, as well as better qualified to assimilate and modify such schemes as Von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious--a philosophy, by the way, quite intolerant of a merely mechanical evolution. (See Von Hartmann's "Wahrheit und Irrthum in Darwinismus". Berlin, 1875.)

Here was not the retrenchment of an extravagant assertion, but the expansion of one which was faltering and inadequate. The traditional statement did not need paring down so as to pass the meshes of a new and exacting criticism. It was itself a net meant to surround and enclose experience; and we must increase its size and close its mesh to hold newly disclosed facts of life. The world, which had seemed a fixed picture or model, gained first perspective and then solidity and movement. We had a glimpse of organic HISTORY; and Christian thought became more living and more assured as it met the larger view of life.

However unsatisfactory the new attitude might be to our critics, to Christians the reform was positive. What was discarded was a limitation, a negation. The movement was essentially conservative, even actually reconstructive. For the language disused was a language inconsistent with the definitions of orthodoxy; it set bounds to the infinite, and by implication withdrew from the creative rule all such processes as could be brought within the descriptions of research. It ascribed fixity and finality to that "creature" in which an apostle taught us to recognise the birth-struggles of an unexhausted progress. It tended to banish mystery from the world we see, and to confine it to a remote first age.

In the reformed, the restored, language of religion, Creation became again not a link in a rational series to complete a circle of the sciences, but the mysterious and permanent relation between the infinite and the finite, between the moving changes we know in part, and the Power, after the fashion of that observation, unknown, which is itself "unmoved all motion's source." (Hymn of the Church-- Rerum Deus tenax vigor, Immotus in te permanens.)

With regard to man it is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to illustrate the application of this bolder faith. When the record of his high extraction fell under dispute, we were driven to a contemplation of the whole of his life, rather than of a part and that part out of sight. We remembered again, out of Aristotle, that the result of a process interprets its beginnings. We were obliged to read the title of such dignity as we may claim, in results and still more in aspirations.

Some men still measure the value of great present facts in life--reason and virtue and sacrifice--by what a self-disparaged reason can collect of the meaner rudiments of these noble gifts. Mr Balfour has admirably displayed the discrepancy, in this view, between the alleged origin and the alleged authority of reason. Such an argument ought to be used not to discredit the confident reason, but to illuminate and dignify its dark beginnings, and to show that at every step in the long course of growth a Power was at work which is not included in any term or in all the terms of the series.

I submit that the more men know of actual Christian teaching, its fidelity to the past, and its sincerity in face of discovery, the more certainly they will judge that the stimulus of the doctrine of evolution has produced in the long run vigour as well as flexibility in the doctrine of Creation and of man.

I pass from Evolution in general to Natural Selection.

The character in religious language which I have for short called mechanical was not absent in the argument from design as stated before Darwin. It seemed to have reference to a world conceived as fixed. It pointed, not to the plastic capacity and energy of living matter, but to the fixed adaptation of this and that organ to an unchanging place or function.

Mr Hobhouse has given us the valuable phrase "a niche of organic opportunity." Such a phrase would have borne a different sense in non- evolutionary thought. In that thought, the opportunity was an opportunity for the Creative Power, and Design appeared in the preparation of the organism to fit the niche. The idea of the niche and its occupant growing together from simpler to more complex mutual adjustment was unwelcome to this teleology. If the adaptation was traced to the influence, through competition, of the environment, the old teleology lost an illustration and a proof. For the cogency of the proof in every instance depended upon the absence of explanation. Where the process of adaptation was discerned, the evidence of Purpose or Design was weak. It was strong only when the natural antecedents were not discovered, strongest when they could be declared undiscoverable.

Paley's favourite word is "Contrivance"; and for him contrivance is most certain where production is most obscure. He points out the physiological advantage of the valvulae conniventes to man, and the advantage for teleology of the fact that they cannot have been formed by "action and pressure." What is not due to pressure may be attributed to design, and when a "mechanical" process more subtle than pressure was suggested, the case for design was so far weakened. The cumulative proof from the multitude of instances began to disappear when, in selection, a natural sequence was suggested in which all the adaptations might be reached by the motive power of life, and especially when, as in Darwin's teaching, there was full recognition of the reactions of life to the stimulus of circumstance. "The organism fits the niche," said the teleologist, "because the Creator formed it so as to fit." "The organism fits the niche," said the naturalist, "because unless it fitted it could not exist." "It was fitted to survive," said the theologian. "It survives because it fits," said the selectionist. The two forms of statement are not incompatible; but the new statement, by provision of an ideally universal explanation of process, was hostile to a doctrine of purpose which relied upon evidences always exceptional however numerous. Science persistently presses on to find the universal machinery of adaptation in this planet; and whether this be found in selection, or in direct-effect, or in vital reactions resulting in large changes, or in a combination of these and other factors, it must always be opposed to the conception of a Divine Power here and there but not everywhere active.

For science, the Divine must be constant, operative everywhere and in every quality and power, in environment and in organism, in stimulus and in reaction, in variation and in struggle, in hereditary equilibrium, and in "the unstable state of species"; equally present on both sides of every strain, in all pressures and in all resistances, in short in the general wonder of life and the world. And this is exactly what the Divine Power must be for religious faith.

The point I wish once more to make is that the necessary readjustment of teleology, so as to make it depend upon the contemplation of the whole instead of a part, is advantageous quite as much to theology as to science. For the older view failed in courage. Here again our theism was not sufficiently theistic.

Where results seemed inevitable, it dared not claim them as God-given. In the argument from Design it spoke not of God in the sense of theology, but of a Contriver, immensely, not infinitely wise and good, working within a world, the scene, rather than the ever dependent outcome, of His Wisdom; working in such emergencies and opportunities as occurred, by forces not altogether within His control, towards an end beyond Himself. It gave us, instead of the awful reverence due to the Cause of all substance and form, all love and wisdom, a dangerously detached appreciation of an ingenuity and benevolence meritorious in aim and often surprisingly successful in contrivance.

The old teleology was more useful to science than to religion, and the design-naturalists ought to be gratefully remembered by Biologists. Their search for evidences led them to an eager study of adaptations and of minute forms, a study such as we have now an incentive to in the theory of Natural Selection. One hardly meets with the same ardour in microscopical research until we come to modern workers. But the argument from Design was never of great importance to faith. Still, to rid it of this character was worth all the stress and anxiety of the gallant old war. If Darwin had done nothing else for us, we are to-day deeply in his debt for this. The world is not less venerable to us now, not less eloquent of the causing mind, rather much more eloquent and sacred. But our wonder is not that "the underjaw of the swine works under the ground" or in any or all of those particular adaptations which Paley collected with so much skill, but that a purpose transcending, though resembling, our own purposes, is everywhere manifest; that what we live in is a whole, mutually sustaining, eventful and beautiful, where the "dead" forces feed the energies of life, and life sustains a stranger existence, able in some real measure to contemplate the whole, of which, mechanically considered, it is a minor product and a rare ingredient. Here, again, the change was altogether positive. It was not the escape of a vessel in a storm with loss of spars and rigging, not a shortening of sail to save the masts and make a port of refuge. It was rather the emergence from narrow channels to an open sea. We had propelled the great ship, finding purchase here and there for slow and uncertain movement. Now, in deep water, we spread large canvas to a favouring breeze.

In front of the eastern MOSQUITO coast, there are between latitude 12 deg and 16 deg some extensive banks (already mentioned, page 148), with high islands rising from their centres; and there are other banks wholly submerged, both of which kinds of banks are bordered, near their windward margins, by crescent-shaped coral-reefs. But it can hardly be doubted, as was observed in the preliminary remarks, that these banks owe their origin, like the great bank extending from the Mosquito promontory, almost entirely to the accumulation of sediment, and not to the growth of corals; hence I have not coloured them.

CAYMAN ISLAND: this island appears in the charts to be fringed; and Captain B. Allen informs me that the reefs extend about a mile from the shore, and have only from five to twelve feet water within them; coloured red.--JAMAICA: judging from the charts, about fifteen miles of the S.E. extremity, and about twice that length on the S.W. extremity, and some portions on the S. side near Kingston and Port Royal, are regularly fringed, and therefore are coloured red. From the plans of some harbours on the N. side of Jamaica, parts of the coast appear to be fringed; but as these are not represented in the charts of the whole island, I have not coloured them.--ST. DOMINGO: I have not been able to obtain sufficient information, either from plans of the harbours, or from general charts, to enable me to colour any part of the coast, except sixty miles from Port de Plata westward, which seems very regularly fringed; many other parts, however, of the coast are probably fringed, especially towards the eastern end of the island.--PUERTO RICO: considerable portions of the southern, western, and eastern coasts, and some parts of the northern coast, appear in the charts to be fringed; coloured red.--Some miles in length of the southern side of the Island of ST. THOMAS is fringed; most of the VIRGIN GORDA Islands, as I am informed by Mr. Schomburgk, are fringed; the shores of ANEGADA, as well as the bank on which it stands, are likewise fringed; these islands have been coloured red. The greater part of the southern side of SANTA CRUZ appears in the Danish survey to be fringed (see also Prof. Hovey's account of this island, in "Silliman's Journal," volume xxxv., page 74); the reefs extend along the shore for a considerable space, and project rather more than a mile; the depth within the reef is three fathoms; coloured red.--The ANTILLES, as remarked by Von Buch ("Descrip. Iles Canaries," page 494), may be divided into two linear groups, the western row being volcanic, and the eastern of modern calcareous origin; my information is very defective on the whole group. Of the eastern islands, BARBUDA and the western coasts of ANTIGUA and MARIAGALANTE appear to be fringed: this is also the case with BARBADOES, as I have been informed by a resident; these islands are coloured red. On the shores of the Western Antilles, of volcanic origin, very few coral-reefs appear to exist. The island of MARTINIQUE, of which there are beautifully executed French charts, on a very large scale, alone presents any appearance worthy of special notice. The south-western, southern, and eastern coasts, together forming about half the circumference of the island, are skirted by very irregular banks, projecting generally rather less than a mile from the shore, and lying from two to five fathoms submerged. In front of almost every valley, they are breached by narrow, crooked, steep-sided passages. The French engineers ascertained by boring, that these submerged banks consisted of madreporitic rocks, which were covered in many parts by thin layers of mud or sand. From this fact, and especially from the structure of the narrow breaches, I think there can be little doubt that these banks once formed living reefs, which fringed the shores of the island, and like other reefs probably reached the surface. From some of these submerged banks reefs of living coral rise abruptly, either in small detached patches, or in lines parallel to, but some way within the outer edges of the banks on which they are based. Besides the above banks which skirt the shores of the island, there is on the eastern side a range of linear banks, similarly constituted, twenty miles in length, extending parallel to the coast line, and separated from it by a space between two and four miles in width, and from five to fifteen fathoms in depth. From this range of detached banks, some linear reefs of living coral likewise rise abruptly; and if they had been of greater length (for they do not front more than a sixth part of the circumference of the island), they would necessarily from their position have been coloured as barrier-reefs; as the case stands they are left uncoloured. I suspect that after a small amount of subsidence, the corals were killed by sand and mud being deposited on them, and the reefs being thus prevented from growing upwards, the banks of madreporitic rock were left in their present submerged condition.

THE BERMUDA Islands have been carefully described by Lieutenant Nelson, in an excellent Memoir in the "Geological Transactions" (volume v., part i., page 103). In the form of the bank or reef, on one side of which the islands stand, there is a close general resemblance to an atoll; but in the following respects there is a considerable difference,--first, in the margin of the reef not forming (as I have been informed by Mr. Chaffers, R.N.) a flat, solid surface, laid bare at low water, and regularly bounding the internal space of shallow water or lagoon; secondly, in the border of gradually shoaling water, nearly a mile and a half in width, which surrounds the entire outside of the reef (as is laid down in Captain Hurd's chart); and thirdly, in the size, height, and extraordinary form of the islands, which present little resemblance to the long, narrow, simple islets, seldom exceeding half a mile in breadth, which surmount the annular reefs of almost all the atolls in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Moreover, there are evident proofs (Nelson, Ibid., page 118), that islands similar to the existing ones, formerly extended over other parts of the reef. It would, I believe, be difficult to find a true atoll with land exceeding thirty feet in height; whereas, Mr. Nelson estimates the highest point of the Bermuda Islands to be 260 feet; if, however, Mr. Nelson's view, that the whole of the land consists of sand drifted by the winds, and agglutinated together, were proved correct, this difference would be immaterial; but, from his own account (page 118), there occur in one place, five or six layers of red earth, interstratified with the ordinary calcareous rock, and including stones too heavy for the wind to have moved, without having at the same time utterly dispersed every grain of the accompanying drifted matter. Mr. Nelson attributes the origin of these several layers, with their embedded stones, to as many violent catastrophes; but further investigation in such cases has generally succeeded in explaining phenomena of this kind by ordinary and simpler means. Finally, I may remark, that these islands have a considerable resemblance in shape to Barbuda in the West Indies, and to Pemba on the eastern coast of Africa, which latter island is about two hundred feet in height, and consists of coral-rock. I believe that the Bermuda Islands, from being fringed by living reefs, ought to have been coloured red; but I have left them uncoloured, on account of their general resemblance in external form to a lagoon-island or atoll.

INDEX.

The names not in capitals are all names of places, and refer exclusively to the Appendix: in well-defined archipelagoes, or groups of islands, the name of each separate island is not given.

ABROLHOS, Brazil, coated by corals.

Abrolhos (Australia).

ABSENCE of coral-reefs from certain coasts.

Acaba, gulf of.

Admiralty group.

AFRICA, east coast, fringing-reef of. Madreporitic rock of.

Africa, east coast.

AGE of individual corals.

Aiou.

Aitutaki.

Aldabra.

Alert reef.

Alexander, Grand Duke, island.

ALLAN, Dr., on Holuthuriae feeding on corals. On quick growth of corals at Madagascar. On reefs affected by currents.

Alloufatou.

Alphonse.

Amargoura. (Amargura.)

Amboina.

America, west coast.

Amirantes.

Anachorites.

Anambas.

ANAMOUKA, description of.

Anamouka.

Anadaman islands.

Antilles.

Appoo reef.

Arabia Felix.

AREAS, great extent of, interspersed with low islands. Of subsidence and of elevation. Of subsidence appear to be elongated. Of subsidence alternating with areas of elevation.

Arru group.

Arzobispo.

ASCIDIA, depth at which found.

Assomption.

Astova.

Atlantic islands.

ATOLLS, breaches in their reefs. Dimensions of. Dimensions of groups of. Not based on craters or on banks of sediment, or of rock. Of irregular forms. Steepness of their flanks. Width of their reef and islets. Their lowness. Lagoons. General range. With part of their reef submerged, and theory of.

Augustine, St.

AURORA island, an upraised atoll.

Aurora.

AUSTRAL islands, recently elevated.

Austral islands.

Australia, N.W. coast.

AUSTRALIAN barrier-reef.

Australian barrier.

Babuyan group.

Bahama banks.

Balahac.

Bally.

Baring.

BARRIER-REEF of Australia. Of New Caledonia.

BARRIER-REEFS, breaches through. Not based on worn down margin of rock. On banks of sediment. On submarine craters. Steepness of their flanks. Their probable vertical thickness. Theory of their formation.

Bampton shoal.

Banks islands.

Banks in the West Indies.

Bashee islands.

Bass island.

Batoa.

Beaupre reef.

BEECHEY, Captain, obligations of the author to. On submerged reefs. Account of Matilda island.

BELCHER, Captain, on boring through coral-reef.

Belize reef, off.

Bellinghausen.

Bermuda islands.

Beveridge reef.

Bligh.

BOLABOLA, view of.

Bombay shoal.

Bonin Bay.

Bonin group.

BORINGS through coral-reefs.

BORNEO, W. coast, recently elevated.

Borneo, E. coast. S.W. and W. coast N. coast. Western bank.

Boscawen.

Boston.

Bouka.

Bourbon.

Bourou.

Bouton.

BRAZIL, fringing-reefs on coast of.

BREACHES through barrier-reefs.

Brook.

Bunker.

Bunoa.

BYRON.

Cagayanes.

Candelaria.

Cargados Carajos.

Caroline archipelago.

Caroline island.

Carteret shoal.

CARYOPHYLLIA, depth at which it lives.

Cavilli.

Cayman island.

Celebes.

Ceram.

CEYLON, recently elevated.

Ceylon.

CHAGOS Great Bank, description and theory of.

CHAGOS group.

Chagos group.

CHAMA-SHELLS embedded in coral-rock.

CHAMISSO, on corals preferring the surf.

CHANGES in the state of Keeling atoll. Of atolls.

CHANNELS leading into the lagoons of atolls. Into the Maldiva atolls. Through barrier-reefs.

Chase.

China sea.

CHRISTMAS atoll.

Christmas atoll.

Christmas island (Indian Ocean).

Clarence.

Clipperton rock.

COCOS, or Keeling atoll.

Cocos (or Keeling).

Cocos island (Pacific).

COCHIN China, encroachments of the sea on the coast.

Cochin China.

Coetivi.

Comoro group.

COMPOSITION of coral-formations.

CONGLOMERATE coral-rock on Keeling atoll. On other atolls. Coral-rock.

COOK islands, recently elevated.

Cook islands.

CORAL-BLOCKS bored by vermiform animals.

CORAL-REEFS, their distribution and absence from certain areas. Destroyed by loose sediment.

CORAL-ROCK at Keeling atoll. Mauritius. Organic remains of.

CORALS dead but upright in Keeling lagoon. Depths at which they live. Off Keeling atoll. Killed by a short exposure. Living in the lagoon of Keeling atoll. Quick growth of, in Keeling lagoon. Merely coating the bottom of the sea. Standing exposed in the Low archipelago.

CORALLIAN sea.

Corallian sea.

Cornwallis.

Cosmoledo.

COUTHOUY, Mr., alleged proofs of recent elevation of the Low archipelago. On coral-rock at Mangaia and Aurora islands. On external ledges round coral-islands. Remarks confirmatory of the author's theory.

CRESCENT-FORMED reefs.

Cuba.

CUMING, Mr., on the recent elevation of the Philippines.

Dangerous, or Low archipelago.

Danger islands.

DEPTHS at which reef-building corals live. At Mauritius, the Red Sea, and in the Maldiva archipelago. At which other corals and corallines can live.

Dhalac group.

DIEGO GARCIA, slow growth of reef.

DIMENSIONS of the larger groups of atolls.

DISSEVERMENT of the Maldiva atolls, and theory of.

DISTRIBUTION of coral-reefs.

Domingo, St.

DORY, Port, recently elevated.

Dory, Port.

Duff islands.

Durour.

Eap.

EARTHQUAKES at Keeling atoll. In groups of atolls. In Navigator archipelago.

EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO, recently elevated.

Easter.

Echequier.

EHRENBERG, on the banks of the Red Sea. On depths at which corals live in the Red Sea. On corals preferring the surf. On the antiquity of certain corals.

Eimeo.

ELEVATED reef of Mauritius.

ELEVATIONS, recent proofs of. Immense areas of.

Elivi.

ELIZABETH island. Recently elevated.

Elizabeth island.

Ellice group.

ENCIRCLED ISLANDS, their height. Geological composition.

EOUA, description of.

Eoua.

ERUPTED MATTER probably not associated with thick masses of coral-rock.

FAIS, recently elevated.

Fais.

Fanning.

Farallon de Medinilla.

Farson group.

Fataka.

FIJI archipelago.

FISH, feeding on corals. Killed in Keeling lagoon by heavy rain.

FISSURES across coral-islands.

FITZROY, Captain, on a submerged shed at Keeling atoll. On an inundation in the Low archipelago.

Flint.

Flores.

Florida.

Folger.

Formosa.

FORSTER, theory of coral-formations.

Frederick reef.

Freewill.

FRIENDLY group recently elevated.

Friendly archipelago.

FRINGING-REEFS, absent where coast precipitous. Breached in front of streams. Described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard. Not closely attached to shelving coasts. Of east coast of Africa. Of Cuba. Of Mauritius. On worn down banks of rock. On banks of sediment. Their appearance when elevated. Their growth influenced by currents. By shallowness of sea.

Galapagos archipelago.

Galega.

GAMBIER islands, section of.

Gambier islands.

Gardner.

Gaspar rico.

GEOLOGICAL COMPOSITION of coral-formations.

Gilbert archipelago.

Gilolo.

Glorioso.

GLOUCESTER Island.

Glover reef.

Gomez.

Gouap.

Goulou.

Grampus.

Gran Cocal.

GREAT CHAGOS BANK, description and theory of.

GREY, Captain, on sandbars.

GROUPING of the different classes of reefs.

Guedes.

HALL, Captain B., on Loo Choo.

HARVEY islands, recently elevated.

HEIGHT of encircled islands.

Hermites.

Hervey or Cook islands.

Hogoleu.

HOLOTHURIAE (Holuthuriae) feeding on coral.

HOUDEN island, height of.

Honduras, reef off.

Horn.

Houtman Abrolhos.

HUAHEINE; alleged proofs of its recent elevation.

Huaheine.

Humphrey.

Hunter.

HURRICANES, effects of, on coral-islands.

Immaum.

Independence.

INDIA, west coast, recently elevated.

India.

IRREGULAR REEFS in shallow seas.

ISLETS of coral-rock, their formation. Their destruction in the Maldiva atolls.

Jamaica.

Jarvis.

JAVA, recently elevated.

Java.

Johnston island.

Juan de Nova.

Juan de Nova (Madagascar).

Kalatoa.

KAMTSCHATKA, proofs of its recent elevation.

Karkalang.

KEELING atoll, section of reef.

Keeling, south atoll. North atoll.

Keffing.

Kemin.

Kennedy.

Keppel.

Kumi.

Laccadive group.

LADRONES, or Marianas, recently elevated.

Ladrones archipelago.

LAGOON of Keeling atoll.

LAGOONS bordered by inclined ledges and walls, and theory of their formation. Of small atolls filled up with sediment.

LAGOON-CHANNELS within barrier-reefs.

LAGOON-REEFS, all submerged in some atolls, and rising to the surface in others.

Lancaster reef.

Latte.

Lauglan islands.

LEDGES round certain lagoons.

Lette.

Lighthouse reef.

LLOYD, Mr., on corals refixing themselves.

LOO CHOO, recently elevated.

Loo Choo.

Louisiade.

LOW ARCHIPELAGO, alleged proofs of its recent elevation.

Low archipelago.

LOWNESS of coral-islands.

Loyalty group.

Lucepara.

LUTKE, Admiral, on fissures across coral-islands.

LUZON, recently elevated.

Luzon.

LYELL, Mr., on channels into the lagoons of atolls. On the lowness of their leeward sides. On the antiquity of certain corals. On the apparent continuity of distinct coral-islands. On the recently elevated beds of the Red Sea. On the outline of the areas of subsidence.

Macassar strait.

Macclesfield bank.

MADAGASCAR, quick growth of corals at. Madreporitic rock of.

Madagascar.

Madjiko-sima.

Madura (Java).

Madura (India).

MAHLOS MAHDOO, theory of formation.

MALACCA, recently elevated.

Malacca.

MALCOLMSON, Dr., on recent elevation of W. coast of India. On recent elevation of Camaran island.

Malden.

MALDIVA atolls, and theory of their formation. Steepness of their flanks. Growth of coral at.

Maldiva archipelago.

MANGAIA island. Recently elevated.

Mangaia.

Mangs.

MARIANAS, recently elevated.

Mariana archipelago.

Mariere.

Marquesas archipelago.

Marshall archipelago.

Marshall island.

Martinique.

Martires.

MARY'S ST., in Madagascar, harbour made in reefs.

Mary island.

Matia, or Aurora.

MATILDA atoll.

MAURITIUS, fringing-reefs of. Depths at which corals live there. Recently elevated.

Mauritius.

MAURUA, section of.

Maurua.

MENCHIKOFF atoll.

Mendana archipelago.

Mendana isles.

Mexico, gulf of.

MILLEPORA COMPLANATA at Keeling atoll.

Mindoro.

Mohilla. (Mohila.)

MOLUCCA islands, recently elevated.

Mopeha.

MORESBY, Captain, on boring through coral-reefs.

Morty.

Mosquito coast.

MUSQUILLO atoll.

Mysol.

NAMOURREK group.

Natunas.

NAVIGATOR archipelago, elevation of.

Navigator archipelago.

Nederlandisch.

NELSON, Lieutenant, on the consolidation of coral-rocks under water. Theory of coral-formations. On the Bermuda islands.

New Britain.

NEW CALEDONIA, steepness of its reefs. Barrier-reef of.

New Caledonia.

New Guinea (E. end).

New Guinea (W. end).

New Hanover.

NEW HEBRIDES, recently elevated.

New Hebrides.

NEW IRELAND, recently elevated.

New Ireland.

New Nantucket.

Nicobar islands.

Niouha.

NULLIPORAE at Keeling atoll. On the reefs of atolls. On barrier-reefs. Their wide distribution and abundance.

OBJECTIONS to the theory of subsidence.

Ocean islands.

Ono.

Onouafu. (Onouafou.)

Ormuz.

Oscar group.

OSCILLATIONS of level.

Ouallan, or Ualan. (Oualan.)

OULUTHY atoll.

Outong Java.

Palawan, S.W. coast. N.W. coast. Western bank.

Palmerston.

Palmyra.

Paracells.

Paraquas.

Patchow.

Pelew islands.

PEMBA island, singular form of.

Pemba.

Penrhyn.

Peregrino.

PERNAMBUCO, bar of sandstone at.

PERSIAN gulf, recently elevated.

Persian gulf.

PESCADO.

Pescadores.

Peyster group.

Philip.

PHILIPPINE archipelago, recently elevated.

Philippine archipelago.

Phoenix.

Piguiram.

Pitcairn.

PITT'S bank.

Pitt island.

Platte.

Pleasant.

PORITES, chief coral on margin of Keeling atoll.

Postillions.

POUYNIPETE. Its probable subsidence.

Pouynipete.

Pratas shoal.

Proby.

Providence.

Puerto Rico.

Pulo Anna.

PUMICE floated to coral-islands.

Pylstaart.

PYRARD DE LAVAL, astonishment at the atolls in the Indian Ocean.

QUOY AND GAIMARD, depths at which corals live. Description of reefs applicable only to fringing-reefs.

RANGE of atolls.

Rapa.

Rearson.

RED SEA, banks of rock coated by reefs. Proofs of its recent elevation. Supposed subsidence of.

Red Sea.

REEFS, irregular in shallow seas. Rising to the surface in some lagoons and all submerged in others. Their distribution. Their absence from some coasts.

Revilla-gigedo.

RING-FORMED REEFS of the Maldiva atolls, and theory of.

Rodriguez.

Rosario.

Rose island.

Rotches.

Rotoumah.

Roug.

Rowley shoals.

RUPPELL, Dr., on the recent deposits of Red Sea.

Sable, ile de.

Sahia de Malha.

St. Pierre.

Sala.

Salomon archipelago. (Solomon.)

SAMOA, or Navigator archipelago, elevation of.

Samoa archipelago.

SAND-BARS parallel to coasts.

Sandal-wood.

SANDWICH archipelago, recently elevated.

Sandwich archipelago.

Sanserot.

Santa-Cruz group.

SAVAGE island, recently elevated.

Savage.

Savu.

Saya, or Sahia de Malha.

Scarborough shoal.

SCARUS feeding on corals.

Schouten.

Scilly.

SCORIAE floated to coral-islands.

Scott's reef.

SECTIONS of islands encircled by barrier-reefs. Of Bolabola.

SEDIMENT in Keeling lagoon. In other atolls. Injurious to corals. Transported from coral-islands far seaward.

Seniavine.

Serangani.

Seychelles.

SHIP-BOTTOM quickly coated with coral.

SMYTH island.

SOCIETY archipelago, stationary condition of. Alleged proofs of recent elevation.

Society archipelago.

Socotra.

Solor.

SOOLOO islands, recently elevated.

Sooloo islands.

Souvaroff.

Spanish.

SPONGE, depths at which found.

Starbuck. (Slarbuck.)

STONES transported in roots of trees.

STORMS, effects of, on coral-islands.

STUTCHBURY, Mr., on the growth of an Agaricia. On upraised corals in Society archipelago.

SUBSIDENCE of Keeling atoll. Extreme slowness of. Areas of, apparently elongated. Areas of immense. Great amount of.

Suez, gulf of.

Sulphur islands.

SUMATRA, recently elevated.

Sumatra.

Sumbawa.

SURF favourable to the growth of massive corals.

Swallow shoal.

Sydney island.

TAHITI, alleged proofs of its recent elevation.

Tahiti.

TEMPERATURE of the sea at the Galapagos archipelago.

Tenasserim.

Tenimber island.

Teturoa.

THEORIES on coral-formations.

THEORY OF subsidence, and objections to.

THICKNESS, vertical, of barrier-reefs.

Thomas, St.

Tikopia.

TIMOR, recently elevated.

Timor.

Timor-laut.

Tokan-Bessees.

Tongatabou.

Tonquin.

Toubai.

COMORO GROUP.

MAYOTTA, according to Horsburgh (volume i., page 216, 4th edition), is completely surrounded by a reef, which runs at the distance of three, four, and in some places even five miles from the land; in an old chart, published by Dalrymple, a depth in many places of thirty-six and thirty-eight fathoms is laid down within the reef. In the same chart, the space of open water within the reef in some parts is even more than three miles wide: the land is bold and peaked; this island, therefore, is encircled by a well-characterised barrier-reef, and is coloured pale blue.--JOHANNA; Horsburgh says (volume I. page 217) this island from the N.W. to the S.W. point, is bounded by a reef, at the distance of two miles from the shore; in some parts, however, the reef must be attached, since Lieutenant Boteler ("Narr." volume i., page 161) describes a passage through it, within which there is room only for a few boats. Its height, as I am informed by Dr. Allan, is about 3,500 feet; it is very precipitous, and is composed of granite, greenstone, and quartz; coloured blue.--MOHILLA; on the S. side of this island there is anchorage, in from thirty to forty-five fathoms, between a reef and the shore (Horsburgh, volume i., page 214); in Captain Owen's chart of Madagascar, this island is represented as encircled; coloured blue.--GREAT COMORO Island is, as I am informed by Dr. Allan, about 8,000 feet high, and apparently volcanic; it is not regularly encircled; but reefs of various shapes and dimensions, jut out from every headland on the W., S., and S.E. coasts, inside of which reefs there are channels, often parallel with the shore, with deep water. On the north-western coasts the reefs appear attached to the shores. The land near the coast is in some places bold, but generally speaking it is flat; Horsburgh says (volume i., page 214) the water is profoundly deep close to the SHORE, from which expression I presume some parts are without reefs. From this description I apprehend the reef belongs to the barrier class; but I have not coloured it, as most of the charts which I have seen, represent the reefs round it as very much less extensive than round the other islands in the group.

MADAGASCAR.

My information is chiefly derived from the published charts by Captain Owen, and the accounts given by him and by Lieutenant Boteler. Commencing at the S.W. extremity of the island; towards the northern part of the STAR BANK (in latitude 25 deg S.) the coast for ten miles is fringed by a reef; coloured red. The shore immediately S. of ST. AUGUSTINE'S BAY appears fringed; but TULLEAR Harbour, directly N. of it, is formed by a narrow reef ten miles long, extending parallel to the shore, with from four to ten fathoms within it. If this reef had been more extensive, it must have been classed as a barrier-reef; but as the line of coast falls inwards here, a submarine bank perhaps extends parallel to the shore, which has offered a foundation for the growth of the coral; I have left this part uncoloured. From latitude 22 deg 16' to 21 deg 37', the shore is fringed by coral-reefs (see Lieutenant Boteler's "Narrative," volume ii., page 106), less than a mile in width, and with shallow water within. There are outlying coral-shoals in several parts of the offing, with about ten fathoms between them and the shore, and the depth of the sea one mile and a half seaward, is about thirty fathoms. The part above specified is engraved on a large scale; and as in the charts on rather a smaller scale the same fringe of reef extends as far as latitude 33 deg 15'; I have coloured the whole of this part of the coast red. The islands of JUAN DE NOVA (in latitude 17 deg S.) appear in the charts on a large scale to be fringed, but I have not been able to ascertain whether the reefs are of coral; uncoloured. The main part of the west coast appears to be low, with outlying sandbanks, which, Lieutenant Boteler (volume ii., page 106) says, "are faced on the edge of deep water by a line of sharp-pointed coral-rocks." Nevertheless I have not coloured this part, as I cannot make out by the charts that the coast itself is fringed. The headlands of NARRENDA and PASSANDAVA Bays (14 deg 40') and the islands in front of RADAMA HARBOUR are represented in the plans as regularly fringed, and have accordingly been coloured red. With respect to the EAST COAST OF MADAGASCAR, Dr. Allan informs me in a letter, that the whole line of coast, from TAMATAVE, in 18 deg 12', to C. AMBER, at the extreme northern point of the island, is bordered by coral-reefs. The land is low, uneven, and gradually rising from the coast. From Captain Owen's charts, also, the existence of these reefs, which evidently belong to the fringing class, on some parts, namely N. of BRITISH SOUND, and near NGONCY, of the above line of coast might have been inferred. Lieutenant Boteler (volume i., page 155) speaks of "the reef surrounding the island of ST. MARY'S at a small distance from the shore." In a previous chapter I have described, from the information of Dr. Allan, the manner in which the reefs extend in N.E. lines from the headlands on this coast, thus sometimes forming rather deep channels within them, this seems caused by the action of the currents, and the reefs spring up from the submarine prolongations of the sandy headlands. The above specified portion of the coast is coloured red. The remaining S.E. portions do not appear in any published chart to possess reefs of any kind; and the Rev. W. Ellis, whose means of information regarding this side of Madagascar have been extensive, informs me he believes there are none.

EAST COAST OF AFRICA.

Proceeding from the northern part, the coast appears, for a considerable space, without reefs. My information, I may here observe, is derived from the survey by Captain Owen, together with his narrative; and that by Lieutenant Boteler. At MUKDEESHA (10 deg 1' N.) there is a coral-reef extending four or five miles along the shore (Owen's "Narr." volume i, page 357) which in the chart lies at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore, and has within it from six to ten feet water: this then is a fringing-reef, and is coloured red. From JUBA, a little S. of the equator, to LAMOO (in 2 deg 20' S.) "the coast and islands are formed of madrepore" (Owen's "Narrative," volume i., page 363). The chart of this part (entitled DUNDAS Islands), presents an extraordinary appearance; the coast of the mainland is quite straight and it is fronted at the average distance of two miles, by exceedingly narrow, straight islets, fringed with reefs. Within the chain of islets, there are extensive tidal flats and muddy bays, into which many rivers enter; the depths of these spaces varies from one to four fathoms--the latter depth not being common, and about twelve feet the average. Outside the chain of islets, the sea, at the distance of a mile, varies in depth from eight to fifteen fathoms. Lieutenant Boteler ("Narr." volume i., page 369) describes the muddy bay of PATTA, which seems to resemble other parts of this coast, as fronted by small, narrow, level islets formed of decomposing coral, the margin of which is seldom of greater height than twelve feet, overhanging the rocky surface from which the islets rise. Knowing that the islets are formed of coral, it is, I think, scarcely possible to view the coast, and not at once conclude that we here see a fringing-reef, which has been upraised a few feet: the unusual depth of from two to four fathoms within some of these islets, is probably due to muddy rivers having prevented the growth of coral near the shore. There is, however, one difficulty on this view, namely, that before the elevation took place, which converted the reef into a chain of islets, the water must apparently have been still deeper; on the other hand it may be supposed that the formation of a nearly perfect barrier in front, of so large an extent of coast, would cause the currents (especially in front of the rivers), to deepen their muddy beds. When describing in the chapter on fringing-reefs, those of Mauritius, I have given my reasons for believing that the shoal spaces within reefs of this kind, must, in many instances, have been deepened. However this may be, as several parts of this line of coast are undoubtedly fringed by living reefs, I have coloured it red.-- MALEENDA (3 deg 20' S.). In the plan of the harbour, the south headland appears fringed; and in Owen's chart on a larger scale, the reefs are seen to extend nearly thirty miles southward; coloured red.--MOMBAS (4 deg 5' S.). The island which forms the harbour, "is surrounded by cliffs of madrepore, capable of being rendered almost impregnable" (Owen's "Narr." volume i., page 412). The shore of the mainland N. and S. of the harbour, is most regularly fringed by a coral-reef at a distance from half a mile to one mile and a quarter from the land; within the reef the depth is from nine to fifteen feet; outside the reef the depth at rather less than half a mile is thirty fathoms. From the charts it appears that a space about thirty-six miles in length, is here fringed; coloured red.--PEMBA (5 deg S.) is an island of coral-formation, level, and about two hundred feet in height (Owen's "Narr." volume i., page 425); it is thirty-five miles long, and is separated from the mainland by a deep sea. The outer coast is represented in the chart as regularly fringed; coloured red. The mainland in front of Pemba is likewise fringed; but there also appear to be some outlying reefs with deep water between them and the shore. I do not understand their structure, either from the charts or the description, therefore have not coloured them.--ZANZIBAR resembles Pemba in most respects; its southern half on the western side and the neighbouring islets are fringed; coloured red. On the mainland, a little S. of Zanzibar, there are some banks parallel to the coast, which I should have thought had been formed of coral, had it not been said (Boteler's "Narr." volume ii., page 39) that they were composed of sand; not coloured.--LATHAM'S BANK is a small island, fringed by coral-reefs; but being only ten feet high, it has not been coloured.--MONFEEA is an island of the same character as Pemba; its outer shore is fringed, and its southern extremity is connected with Keelwa Point on the mainland by a chain of islands fringed by reefs; coloured red. The four last-mentioned islands resemble in many respects some of the islands in the Red Sea, which will presently be described.-- KEELWA. In a plan of the shore, a space of twenty miles N. and S. of this place is fringed by reefs, apparently of coral: these reefs are prolonged still further southward in Owen's general chart. The coast in the plans of the rivers LINDY and MONGHOW (9 deg 59' and 10 deg 7' S.) has the same structure; coloured red.--QUERIMBA Islands (from 10 deg 40' to 13 deg S.). A chart on a large scale is given of these islands; they are low, and of coral-formation (Boteler's "Narr." volume ii., page 54); and generally have extensive reefs projecting from them which are dry at low water, and which on the outside rise abruptly from a deep sea: on their insides they are separated from the continent by a channel, or rather a succession of bays, with an average depth of ten fathoms. The small headlands on the continent also have coral-banks attached to them; and the Querimba islands and banks are placed on the lines of prolongation of these headlands, and are separated from them by very shallow channels. It is evident that whatever cause, whether the drifting of sediment or subterranean movements, produced the headlands, likewise produced, as might have been expected, submarine prolongations to them; and these towards their outer extremities, have since afforded a favourable basis for the growth of coral-reefs, and subsequently for the formation of islets. As these reefs clearly belong to the fringing class, the Querimba islands have been coloured red.--MONABILA (13 deg 32' S.). In the plan of this harbour, the headlands outside are fringed by reefs apparently of coral; coloured red.--MOZAMBIQUE (150 deg S.) The outer part of the island on which the city is built, and the neighbouring islands, are fringed by coral-reefs; coloured red. From the description given in Owen's "Narr." (volume i., page 162), the shore from MOZAMBIQUE to DELAGOA BAY appears to be low and sandy; many of the shoals and islets off this line of coast are of coral-formation; but from their small size and lowness, it is not possible, from the charts, to know whether they are truly fringed. Hence this portion of coast is left uncoloured, as are likewise those parts more northward, of which no mention has been made in the foregoing pages from the want of information.

PERSIAN GULF.

From the charts lately published on a large scale by the East India Company, it appears that several parts, especially the southern shores of this gulf, are fringed by coral-reefs; but as the water is very shallow, and as there are numerous sandbanks, which are difficult to distinguish on the chart from reefs, I have not coloured the upper part red. Towards the mouth, however, where the water is rather deeper, the islands of ORMUZ and LARRACK, appear so regularly fringed, that I have coloured them red. There are certainly no atolls in the Persian Gulf. The shores of IMMAUM, and of the promontory forming the southern headland of the Persian Gulf, seem to be without reefs. The whole S.W. part (except one or two small patches) of ARABIA FELIX, and the shores of SOCOTRA appear from the charts and memoir of Captain Haines ("Geographical Journal," 1839, page 125) to be without any reefs. I believe there are no extensive coral-reefs on any part of the coasts of INDIA, except on the low promontory of MADURA (as already mentioned) in front of Ceylon.

RED SEA.

My information is chiefly derived from the admirable charts published by the East India Company in 1836, from personal communication with Captain Moresby, one of the surveyors, and from the excellent memoir, "Uber die Natur der Corallen-Banken des Rothen Meeres," by Ehrenberg. The plains immediately bordering the Red Sea seem chiefly to consist of a sedimentary formation of the newer tertiary period. The shore is, with the exception of a few parts, fringed by coral-reefs. The water is generally profoundly deep close to the shore; but this fact, which has attracted the attention of most voyagers, seems to have no necessary connection with the presence of reefs; for Captain Moresby particularly observed to me, that, in latitude 24 deg 10' on the eastern side, there is a piece of coast, with very deep water close to it, without any reefs, but not differing in other respects from the usual nature of the coast-line. The most remarkable feature in the Red Sea is the chain of submerged banks, reefs, and islands, lying some way from the shore, chiefly on the eastern side; the space within being deep enough to admit a safe navigation in small vessels. The banks are generally of an oval form, and some miles in width; but some of them are very long in proportion to their width. Captain Moresby informs me that any one, who had not made actual plans of them, would be apt to think that they were much more elongated than they really are. Many of them rise to the surface, but the greater number lie from five to thirty fathoms beneath it, with irregular soundings on them. They consist of sand and living coral; coral on most of them, according to Captain Moresby, covering the greater part of their surface. They extend parallel to the shore, and they are not unfrequently connected in their middle parts by short transverse banks with the mainland. The sea is generally profoundly deep quite close to them, as it is near most parts of the coast of the mainland; but this is not universally the case, for between latitude 15 deg and 17 deg the water deepens quite gradually from the banks, both on the eastern and western shores, towards the middle of the sea. Islands in many parts arise from these banks; they are low, flat-topped, and consist of the same horizontally stratified formation with that forming the plain-like margin of the mainland. Some of the smaller and lower islands consist of mere sand. Captain Moresby informs me, that small masses of rock, the remnants of islands, are left on many banks where there is now no dry land. Ehrenberg also asserts that most of the islets, even the lowest, have a flat abraded basis, composed of the same tertiary formation: he believes that as soon as the surf wears down the protuberant parts of a bank, just beneath the level of the sea, the surface becomes protected from further abrasion by the growth of coral, and he thus accounts for the existence of so many banks standing on a level with the surface of this sea. It appears that most of the islands are certainly decreasing in size.

The form of the banks and islands is most singular in the part just referred to, namely, from latitude 15 deg to 17 deg, where the sea deepens quite gradually: the DHALAC group, on the western coast, is surrounded by an intricate archipelago of islets and shoals; the main island is very irregularly shaped, and it includes a bay seven miles long, by four across, in which no bottom was found with 252 feet: there is only one entrance into this bay, half a mile wide, and with an island in front of it. The submerged banks on the eastern coast, within the same latitudes, round FARSAN Island, are, likewise, penetrated by many narrow creeks of deep water; one is twelve miles long, in the form of a hatchet, in which, close to its broad upper end, soundings were not struck with 360 feet, and its entrance is only half a mile wide: in another creek of the same nature, but even with a more irregular outline, there was no bottom with 480 feet. The island of Farsan, itself, has as singular a form as any of its surrounding banks. The bottom of the sea round the Dhalac and Farsan Islands consists chiefly of sand and agglutinated fragments, but, in the deep and narrow creeks, it consists of mud; the islands themselves consist of thin, horizontally stratified, modern tertiary beds, containing but little broken coral (Ruppell, "Reise in Abyssinie," Band. i., S. 247.), their shores are fringed by living coral-reefs.

From the account given by Ruppell (Ibid., S. 245.) of the manner in which Dhalac has been rent by fissures, the opposite sides of which have been unequally elevated (in one instance to the amount of fifty feet), it seems probable that its irregular form, as well as probably that of Farsan, may have been partly caused by unequal elevations; but, considering the general form of the banks, and of the deep-water creeks, together with the composition of the land, I think their configuration is more probably due in great part to strong currents having drifted sediment over an uneven bottom: it is almost certain that their form cannot be attributed to the growth of coral. Whatever may have been the precise origin of the Dhalac and Farsan Archipelagoes, the greater number of the banks on the eastern side of the Red Sea seem to have originated through nearly similar means. I judge of this from their similarity in configuration (in proof of which I may instance a bank on the east coast in latitude 22 deg; and although it is true that the northern banks generally have a less complicated outline), and from their similarity in composition, as may be observed in their upraised portions. The depth within the banks northward of latitude 17 deg, is usually greater, and their outer sides shelve more abruptly (circumstances which seem to go together) than in the Dhalac and Farsan Archipelagoes; but this might easily have been caused by a difference in the action of the currents during their formation: moreover, the greater quantity of living coral, which, according to Captain Moresby, exists on the northern banks, would tend to give them steeper margins.

From this account, brief and imperfect as it is, we can see that the great chain of banks on the eastern coast, and on the western side in the southern portion, differ greatly from true barrier-reefs wholly formed by the growth of coral. It is indeed the direct conclusion of Ehrenberg ("Uber die," etc., pages 45 and 51), that they are connected in their origin quite secondarily with the growth of coral; and he remarks that the islands off the coast of Norway, if worn down level with the sea, and merely coated with living coral, would present a nearly similar appearance. I cannot, however, avoid suspecting, from information given me by Dr. Malcolmson and Captain Moresby, that Ehrenberg has rather under-rated the influence of corals, in some places at least, on the formation of the tertiary deposits of the Red Sea.

THE WEST COAST OF THE RED SEA BETWEEN LATITUDE 19 DEG AND 22 DEG.

There are, in this space, reefs, which, if I had known nothing of those in other parts of the Red Sea, I should unhesitatingly have considered as barrier-reefs; and, after deliberation, I have come to the same conclusion. One of these reefs, in 20 deg 15', is twenty miles long, less than a mile in width (but expanding at the northern end into a disc), slightly sinuous, and extending parallel to the mainland at the distance of five miles from it, with very deep water within; in one spot soundings were not obtained with 205 fathoms. Some leagues further south, there is another linear reef, very narrow, ten miles long, with other small portions of reef, north and south, almost connected with it; and within this line of reefs (as well as outside) the water is profoundly deep. There are also some small linear and sickle-formed reefs, lying a little way out at sea. All these reefs are covered, as I am informed by Captain Moresby, by living corals. Here, then, we have all the characters of reefs of the barrier class; and in some outlying reefs we have an approach to the structure of atolls. The source of my doubts about the classification of these reefs, arises from having observed in the Dhalac and Farsan groups the narrowness and straightness of several spits of sand and rock: one of these spits in the Dhalac group is nearly fifteen miles long, only two broad, and it is bordered on each side with deep water; so that, if worn down by the surf, and coated with living corals, it would form a reef nearly similar to those within the space under consideration. There is, also, in this space (latitude 21 deg) a peninsula, bordered by cliffs, with its extremity worn down to the level of the sea, and its basis fringed with reefs: in the line of prolongation of this peninsula, there lies the island of MACOWA (formed, according to Captain Moresby, of the usual tertiary deposit), and some smaller islands, large parts of which likewise appear to have been worn down, and are now coated with living corals. If the removal of the strata in these several cases had been more complete, the reefs thus formed would have nearly resembled those barrier-like ones now under discussion. Notwithstanding these facts, I cannot persuade myself that the many very small, isolated, and sickle-formed reefs and others, long, nearly straight, and very narrow, with the water unfathomably deep close round them, could possibly have been formed by corals merely coating banks of sediment, or the abraded surfaces of irregularly shaped islands. I feel compelled to believe that the foundations of these reefs have subsided, and that the corals, during their upward growth, have given to these reefs their present forms: I may remark that the subsidence of narrow and irregularly-shaped peninsulas and islands, such as those existing on the coasts of the Red Sea, would afford the requisite foundations for the reefs in question.

THE WEST COAST FROM LATITUDE 22 DEG TO 24 DEG.

This part of the coast (north of the space coloured blue on the map) is fronted by an irregularly shelving bank, from about ten to thirty fathoms deep; numerous little reefs, some of which have the most singular shapes, rise from this bank. It may be observed, respecting one of them, in latitude 23 deg 10', that if the promontory in latitude 24 deg were worn down to the level of the sea, and coated with corals, a very similar and grotesquely formed reef would be produced. Many of the reefs on this part of the coast may thus have originated; but there are some sickle, and almost atoll-formed reefs lying in deep water off the promontory in latitude 24 deg, which lead me to suppose that all these reefs are more probably allied to the barrier or atoll classes. I have not, however, ventured to colour this portion of coast. ON THE WEST COAST FROM LATITUDE 19 DEG TO 17 DEG (south of space coloured blue on the map), there are many low islets of very small dimensions, not much elongated, and rising out of great depths at a distance from the coast; these cannot be classed either with atolls, or barrier- or fringing-reefs. I may here remark that the outlying reefs on the west coast, between latitude 19 deg and 24 deg, are the only ones in the Red Sea, which approach in structure to the true atolls of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but they present only imperfect miniature likenesses of them.

EASTERN COAST.

I have felt the greatest doubt about colouring any portion of this coast, north of the fringing-reefs round the Farsan Islands in 16 deg 10'. There are many small outlying coral-reefs along the whole line of coast; but as the greater number rise from banks not very deeply submerged (the formation of which has been shown to be only secondarily connected with the growth of coral), their origin may be due simply to the growth of knolls of corals, from an irregular foundation situated within a limited depth. But between latitude 18 deg and 20 deg, there are so many linear, elliptic, and extremely small reefs, rising abruptly out of profound depths, that the same reasons, which led me to colour blue a portion of the west coast, have induced me to do the same in this part. There exist some small outlying reefs rising from deep water, north of latitude 20 deg (the northern limit coloured blue), on the east coast; but as they are not very numerous and scarcely any of them linear, I have thought it right to leave them uncoloured.

In the SOUTHERN PARTS of the Red Sea, considerable spaces of the mainland, and of some of the Dhalac islands, are skirted by reefs, which, as I am informed by Captain Moresby, are of living coral, and have all the characters of the fringing class. As in these latitudes, there are no outlying linear or sickle-formed reefs, rising out of unfathomable depths, I have coloured these parts of the coast red. On similar grounds, I have coloured red the NORTHERN PARTS OF THE WESTERN COAST (north of latitude 24 deg 30'), and likewise the shores of the chief part of the GULF OF SUEZ. In the GULF OF ACABA, as I am informed by Captain Moresby there are no coral-reefs, and the water is profoundly deep.

WEST INDIES.

My information regarding the reefs of this area, is derived from various sources, and from an examination of numerous charts; especially of those lately executed during the survey under Captain Owen, R.N. I lay under particular obligation to Captain Bird Allen, R.N., one of the members of the late survey, for many personal communications on this subject. As in the case of the Red Sea, it is necessary to make some preliminary remarks on the submerged banks of the West Indies, which are in some degree connected with coral-reefs, and cause considerable doubts in their classification. That large accumulations of sediment are in progress on the West Indian shores, will be evident to any one who examines the charts of that sea, especially of the portion north of a line joining Yucutan and Florida. The area of deposition seems less intimately connected with the debouchement of the great rivers, than with the course of the sea-currents; as is evident from the vast extension of the banks from the promontories of Yucutan and Mosquito.

Besides the coast-banks, there are many of various dimensions which stand quite isolated; these closely resemble each other, they lie from two or three to twenty or thirty fathoms under water, and are composed of sand, sometimes firmly agglutinated, with little or no coral; their surfaces are smooth and nearly level, shelving only to the amount of a few fathoms, very gradually all round towards their edges, where they plunge abruptly into the unfathomable sea. This steep inclination of their sides, which is likewise characteristic of the coast-banks, is very remarkable: I may give as an instance, the Misteriosa Bank, on the edges of which the soundings change in 250 fathoms horizontal distance, from 11 to 210 fathoms; off the northern point of the bank of Old Providence, in 200 fathoms horizontal distance, the change is from 19 to 152 fathoms; off the Great Bahama Bank, in 160 fathoms horizontal distance, the inclination is in many places from 10 fathoms to no bottom with 190 fathoms. On coasts in all parts of the world, where sediment is accumulating, something of this kind may be observed; the banks shelve very gently far out to sea, and then terminate abruptly. The form and composition of the banks standing in the middle parts of the W. Indian Sea, clearly show that their origin must be chiefly attributed to the accumulation of sediment; and the only obvious explanation of their isolated position is the presence of a nucleus, round which the currents have collected fine drift matter. Any one who will compare the character of the bank surrounding the hilly island of Old Providence, with those banks in its neighbourhood which stand isolated, will scarcely doubt that they surround submerged mountains. We are led to the same conclusion by examining the bank called Thunder Knoll, which is separated from the Great Mosquito Bank by a channel only seven miles wide, and 145 fathoms deep. There cannot be any doubt that the Mosquito Bank has been formed by the accumulation of sediment round the promontory of the same name; and Thunder Knoll resembles the Mosquito Bank, in the state of its surface submerged twenty fathoms, in the inclinations of its sides, in composition, and in every other respect. I may observe, although the remark is here irrelevant, that geologists should be cautious in concluding that all the outlyers of any formation have once been connected together, for we here see that deposits, doubtless of exactly the same nature, may be deposited with large valley-like spaces between them.

Linear strips of coral-reefs and small knolls project from many of the isolated, as well as coast-banks; sometimes they occur quite irregularly placed, as on the Mosquito Bank, but more generally they form crescents on the windward side, situated some little distance within the outer edge of the banks:--thus on the Serranilla Bank they form an interrupted chain which ranges between two and three miles within the windward margin: generally they occur, as on Roncador, Courtown, and Anegada Banks, nearer the line of deep water. Their occurrence on the windward side is conformable to the general rule, of the efficient kinds of corals flourishing best where most exposed; but their position some way within the line of deep water I cannot explain, without it be, that a depth somewhat less than that close to the outer margin of the banks, is most favourable to their growth. Where the corals have formed a nearly continuous rim, close to the windward edge of a bank some fathoms submerged, the reef closely resembles an atoll; but if the bank surrounds an island (as in the case of Old Providence), the reef resembles an encircling barrier-reef. I should undoubtedly have classed some of these fringed banks as imperfect atolls, or barrier-reefs, if the sedimentary nature of their foundations had not been evident from the presence of other neighbouring banks, of similar forms and of similar composition, but without the crescent-like marginal reef: in the third chapter, I observed that probably some atoll-like reefs did exist, which had originated in the manner here supposed.

Proofs of elevation within recent tertiary periods abound, as referred to in the sixth chapter, over nearly the whole area of the West Indies. Hence it is easy to understand the origin of the low land on the coasts, where sediment is now accumulating; for instance on the northern part of Yucutan, and on the N.E. part of Mosquito, where the land is low, and where extensive banks appear to be in progressive formation. Hence, also, the origin of the Great Bahama Banks, which are bordered on their western and southern edges by very narrow, long, singularly shaped islands, formed of sand, shells, and coral-rock, and some of them about a hundred feet in height, is easily explained by the elevation of banks fringed on their windward (western and southern) sides by coral-reefs. On this view, however, we must suppose either that the chief part of the surfaces of the great Bahama sandbanks were all originally deeply submerged, and were brought up to their present level by the same elevatory action, which formed the linear islands; or that during the elevation of the banks, the superficial currents and swell of the waves continued wearing them down and keeping them at a nearly uniform level: the level is not quite uniform; for, in proceeding from the N.W. end of the Bahama group towards the S.E. end, the depth of the banks increases, and the area of land decreases, in a very gradual and remarkable manner. The latter view, namely, that these banks have been worn down by the currents and swell during their elevation, seems to me the most probable one. It is, also, I believe, applicable to many banks, situated in widely distant parts of the West Indian Sea, which are wholly submerged; for, on any other view, we must suppose, that the elevatory forces have acted with astonishing uniformity.

The shores of the Gulf of Mexico, for the space of many hundred miles, is formed by a chain of lagoons, from one to twenty miles in breadth ("Columbian Navigator," page 178, etc.), containing either fresh or salt water, and separated from the sea by linear strips of sand. Great spaces of the shores of Southern Brazil (In the "London and Edinburgh Philosophical Journal," 1841, page 257, I have described a singular bar of sandstone lying parallel to the coast off Pernambuco in Brazil, which probably is an analogous formation.), and of the United States from Long Island (as observed by Professor Rogers) to Florida have the same character. Professor Rogers, in his "Report to the British Association" (volume iii., page 13), speculates on the origin of these low, sandy, linear islets; he states that the layers of which they are composed are too homogeneous, and contain too large a proportion of shells, to permit the common supposition of their formation being simply due to matter thrown up, where it now lies, by the surf: he considers these islands as upheaved bars or shoals, which were deposited in lines where opposed currents met. It is evident that these islands and spits of sand parallel to the coast, and separated from it by shallow lagoons, have no necessary connection with coral-formations. But in Southern Florida, from the accounts I have received from persons who have resided there, the upraised islands seem to be formed of strata, containing a good deal of coral, and they are extensively fringed by living reefs; the channels within these islands are in some places between two and three miles wide, and five or six fathoms deep, though generally (In the ordinary sea-charts, no lagoons appear on the coast of Florida, north of 26 deg; but Major Whiting ("Silliman's Journal," volume xxxv., page 54) says that many are formed by sand thrown up along the whole line of coast from St. Augustine's to Jupiter Inlet.) they are less in depth than width. After having seen how frequently banks of sediment in the West Indian Sea are fringed by reefs, we can readily conceive that bars of sediment might be greatly aided in their formation along a line of coast, by the growth of corals; and such bars would, in that case, have a deceptive resemblance with true barrier-reefs.

Having now endeavoured to remove some sources of doubt in classifying the reefs of the West Indies, I will give my authorities for colouring such portions of the coast as I have thought myself warranted in doing. Captain Bird Allen informs me, that most of the islands on the BAHAMA BANKS are fringed, especially on their windward sides, with living reefs; and hence I have coloured those, which are thus represented in Captain Owen's late chart, red. The same officer informs me, that the islands along the southern part of FLORIDA are similarly fringed; coloured red. CUBA: Proceeding along the northern coast, at the distance of forty miles from the extreme S.E. point, the shores are fringed by reefs, which extend westward for a space of 160 miles, with only a few breaks. Parts of these reefs are represented in the plans of the harbours on this coast by Captain Owen; and an excellent description is given of them by Mr. Taylor (Loudon's "Mag. of Nat. Hist." volume ix., page 449); he states that they enclosed a space called the "baxo," from half to three-quarters of a mile in width, with a sandy bottom, and a little coral. In most parts people can wade, at low water, to the reef; but in some parts the depth is between two and three fathoms. Close outside the reef, the depth is between six and seven fathoms; these well-characterised fringing-reefs are coloured red. Westward of longitude 77 deg 30', on the northern side of Cuba, a great bank commences, which extends along the coast for nearly four degrees of longitude. In the place of its commencement, in its structure, and in the "CAYS," or low islands on its edge, there is a marked correspondence (as observed by Humboldt, "Pers. Narr." volume vii., page 88) between it and the Great Bahama and Sal Banks, which lie directly in front. Hence one is led to attribute the same origin to both these sets of banks; namely, the accumulation of sediment, conjoined with an elevatory movement, and the growth of coral on their outward edges; those parts which appear fringed by living reefs are coloured red. Westward of these banks, there is a portion of coast apparently without reefs, except in the harbours, the shores of which seem in the published plans to be fringed. The COLORADO SHOALS (see Captain Owen's charts), and the low land at the western end of Cuba, correspond as closely in relative position and structure to the banks at the extreme point of Florida, as the banks above described on the north side of Cuba, do to the Bahamas, the depth within the islets and reefs on the outer edge of the COLORADOS, is generally between two and three fathoms, increasing to twelve fathoms in the southern part, where the bank becomes nearly open, without islets or coral-reefs; the portions which are fringed are coloured red. The southern shore of Cuba is deeply concave, and the included space is filled up with mud and sandbanks, low islands and coral-reefs. Between the mountainous ISLE OF PINES and the southern shore of Cuba, the general depth is only between two and three fathoms; and in this part small islands, formed of fragmentary rock and broken madrepores (Humboldt, "Pers. Narr." volume vii. pages 51, 86 to 90, 291, 309, 320), rise abruptly, and just reach the surface of the sea. From some expressions used in the "Columbian Navigator" (volume i., part ii., page 94), it appears that considerable spaces along the outer coast of Southern Cuba are bounded by cliffs of coral-rock, formed probably by the upheaval of coral-reefs and sandbanks. The charts represent the southern part of the Isle of Pines as fringed by reefs, which the "Columb. Navig." says extend some way from the coast, but have only from nine to twelve feet water on them; these are coloured red.--I have not been able to procure any detailed description of the large groups of banks and "cays" further eastward on the southern side of Cuba; within them there is a large expanse, with a muddy bottom, from eight to twelve fathoms deep; although some parts of this line of coast are represented in the general charts of the West Indies, as fringed, I have not thought it prudent to colour them. The remaining portion of the south coast of Cuba appears to be without coral-reefs.

NEW IRELAND.

The shores of the S.W. point of this island and some adjoining islets, are fringed by reefs, as may be seen in the "Atlases of the Voyages of the 'Coquille' and 'Astrolabe'." M. Lesson observes that the reefs are open in front of each streamlet. The DUKE OF YORK'S Island is also fringed; but with regard to the other parts of NEW IRELAND, NEW HANOVER, and the small islands lying northward, I have been unable to obtain any information. I will only add that no part of New Ireland appears to be fronted by distant reefs. I have coloured red only the above specified portions.

NEW BRITAIN AND THE NORTHERN SHORE OF NEW GUINEA.

From the charts in the "Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'," and from the "Hydrog. Memoir," it appears that these coasts are entirely without reefs, as are the SCHOUTEN Islands, lying close to the northern shore of New Guinea. The western and south-western parts of New Guinea, will be treated of when we come to the islands of the East Indian Archipelago.

ADMIRALTY GROUP.

From the accounts by Bougainville, Maurelle, D'Entrecasteaux, and the scattered notices collected by Horsburgh, it appears, that some of the many islands composing it, are high, with a bold outline; and others are very low, small and interlaced with reefs. All the high islands appear to be fronted by distant reefs rising abruptly from the sea, and within some of which there is reason to believe that the water is deep. I have therefore little doubt they are of the barrier class.--In the southern part of the group we have ELIZABETH Island, which is surrounded by a reef at the distance of a mile; and two miles eastward of it (Krusenstern, "Append." 1835, page 42) there is a little island containing a lagoon.--Near here, also lies CIRCULAR-REEF (Horsburgh, "Direct." volume i., page 691, 4th edition), "three or four miles in diameter having deep water inside with an opening at the N.N.W. part, and on the outside steep to." I have from these data, coloured the group pale blue, and CIRCULAR-REEF dark blue.--the ANACHORITES, ECHEQUIER, and HERMITES, consist of innumerable low islands of coral-formation, which probably have atoll-like forms; but not being able to ascertain this, I have not coloured them, nor DUROUR Island, which is described by Carteret as low.

The CAROLINE ARCHIPELAGO is now well-known, chiefly from the hydrographical labours of Lutke; it contains about forty groups of atolls, and three encircled islands, two of which are engraved in Figures 2 and 7, Plate I. Commencing with the eastern part; the encircling reef round UALEN appears to be only about half a mile from the shore; but as the land is low and covered with mangroves ("Voyage autour du Monde," par F. Lutke, volume i., page 339), the real margin has not probably been ascertained. The extreme depth in one of the harbours within the reef is thirty-three fathoms (see charts in "Atlas of 'Coquille's' Voyage"), and outside at half a mile distant from the reef, no bottom was obtained with two hundred and fifty fathoms. The reef is surmounted by many islets, and the lagoon-like channel within is mostly shallow, and appears to have been much encroached on by the low land surrounding the central mountains; these facts show that time has allowed much detritus to accumulate; coloured pale blue.-- POUYNIPETE, or Seniavine. In the greater part of the circumference of this island, the reef is about one mile and three quarters distant; on the north side it is five miles off the included high islets. The reef is broken in several places; and just within it, the depth in one place is thirty fathoms, and in another, twenty-eight, beyond which, to all appearance, there was "un porte vaste et sur" (Lutke, volume ii., page 4); coloured pale blue.--HOGOLEU or ROUG. This wonderful group contains at least sixty-two islands, and its reef is one hundred and thirty-five miles in circuit. Of the islands, only a few, about six or eight (see "Hydrog. Descrip." page 428, of the "Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'," and the large accompanying chart taken chiefly from that given by Duperrey) are high, and the rest are all small, low, and formed on the reef. The depth of the great interior lake has not been ascertained; but Captain D'Urville appears to have entertained no doubt about the possibility of taking in a frigate. The reef lies no less than fourteen miles distant from the northern coasts of the interior high islands, seven from their western sides, and twenty from the southern; the sea is deep outside. This island is a likeness on a grand scale to the Gambier group in the Low Archipelago. Of the groups of low (In D'Urville and Lottin's chart, Peserare is written with capital letters; but this evidently is an error, for it is one of the low islets on the reef of Namonouyto (see Lutke's charts)--a regular atoll.) islands forming the chief part of the Caroline Archipelago, all those of larger size, have the true atoll-structure (as may be seen in the "Atlas" by Captain Lutke), and some even of the very small ones, as MACASKILL and DUPERREY, of which plans are given in the "Atlas of the 'Coquille's' Voyage." There are, however, some low small islands of coral-formation, namely OLLAP, TAMATAM, BIGALI, SATAHOUAL, which do not contain lagoons; but it is probable that lagoons originally existed, but have since filled up: Lutke (volume ii., page 304) seems to have thought that all the low islands, with only one exception, contained lagoons. From the sketches, and from the manner in which the margins of these islands are engraved in the "Atlas of the Voyage of the 'Coquille'," it might have been thought that they were not low; but by a comparison with the remarks of Lutke (volume ii., page 107, regarding Bigali) and of Freycinet ("Hydrog. Memoir 'L'Uranie' Voyage," page 188, regarding Tamatam, Ollap, etc.), it will be seen that the artist must have represented the land incorrectly. The most southern island in the group, namely PIGUIRAM, is not coloured, because I have found no account of it. NOUGOUOR, or MONTE VERDISON, which was not visited by Lutke, is described and figured by Mr. Bennett ("United Service Journal," January 1832) as an atoll. All the above-mentioned islands have been coloured blue.

WESTERN PART OF THE CAROLINE ARCHIPELAGO.

FAIS Island is ninety feet high, and is surrounded, as I have been informed by Admiral Lutke, by a narrow reef of living coral, of which the broadest part, as represented in the charts, is only 150 yards; coloured red.-- PHILIP Island., I believe, is low; but Hunter, in his "Historical Journal," gives no clear account of it; uncoloured.--ELIVI; from the manner in which the islets on the reefs are engraved, in the "Atlas of the 'Astrolabe's' Voyage," I should have thought they were above the ordinary height, but Admiral Lutke assures me this is not the case: they form a regular atoll; coloured blue.--GOUAP (EAP of Chamisso), is a high island with a reef (see chart in "Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'"), more than a mile distant in most parts from the shore, and two miles in one part. Captain D'Urville thinks that there would be anchorage ("Hydrog. Descript. 'Astrolabe' Voyage," page 436) for ships within the reef, if a passage could be found; coloured pale blue.--GOULOU, from the chart in the "'Astrolabe's' Atlas," appears to be an atoll. D'Urville ("Hydrog. Descript." page 437) speaks of the low islets on the reef; coloured dark blue.

PELEW ISLANDS.

Krusenstern speaks of some of the islands being mountainous; the reefs are distant from the shore, and there are spaces within them, and not opposite valleys, with from ten to fifteen fathoms. According to a MS. chart of the group by Lieutenant Elmer in the Admiralty, there is a large space within the reef with deepish water; although the high land does not hold a central position with respect to the reefs, as is generally the case, I have little doubt that the reefs of the Pelew Islands ought to be ranked with the barrier class, and I have coloured them pale blue. In Lieutenant Elmer's chart there is a horseshoe-formed shoal, laid down thirteen miles N.W. of Pelew, with fifteen fathoms within the reef, and some dry banks on it; coloured dark blue.--SPANISH, MARTIRES, SANSEROT, PULO ANNA and MARIERE Islands are not coloured, because I know nothing about them, excepting that according to Krusenstern, the second, third, and fourth mentioned, are low, placed on coral-reefs, and therefore, perhaps, contain lagoons; but Pulo Mariere is a little higher.

MARIANA ARCHIPELAGO, or LADRONES.

GUAHAN. Almost the whole of this island is fringed by reefs, which extend in most parts about a third of a mile from the land. Even where the reefs are most extensive, the water within them is shallow. In several parts there is a navigable channel for boats and canoes within the reefs. In Freycinet's "Hydrog. Mem." there is an account of these reefs, and in the "Atlas," a map on a large scale; coloured red.--ROTA. "L'ile est presque entierement entouree des recifs" (page 212, Freycinet's "Hydrog. Mem."). These reefs project about a quarter of a mile from the shore; coloured red.--TINIAN. THE EASTERN coast is precipitous, and is without reefs; but the western side is fringed like the last island; coloured red.--SAYPAN. The N.E. coast, and likewise the western shores appear to be fringed; but there is a great, irregular, horn-like reef projecting far from this side; coloured red.--FARALLON DE MEDINILLA, appears so regularly and closely fringed in Freycinet's charts, that I have ventured to colour it red, although nothing is said about reefs in the "Hydrographical Memoir." The several islands which form the northern part of the group are volcanic (with the exception perhaps of Torres, which resembles in form the madreporitic island of Medinilla), and appear to be without reefs.--MANGS, however, is described (by Freycinet, page 219, "Hydrog.") from some Spanish charts, as formed of small islands placed "au milieu des nombreux recifs;" and as these reefs in the general chart of the group do not project so much as a mile; and as there is no appearance from a double line, of the existence of deep water within, I have ventured, although with much hesitation, to colour them red. Respecting FOLGER and MARSHALL Islands which lie some way east of the Marianas, I can find out nothing, excepting that they are probably low. Krusenstern says this of Marshall Island; and Folger Island is written with small letters in D'Urville's chart; uncoloured.

BONIN OR ARZOBISPO GROUP.

PEEL Island has been examined by Captain Beechey, to whose kindness I am much indebted for giving me information regarding it: "At Port Lloyd there is a great deal of coral; and the inner harbour is entirely formed by coral-reefs, which extend outside the port along the coast." Captain Beechey, in another part of his letter to me, alludes to the reefs fringing the island in all directions; but at the same time it must be observed that the surf washes the volcanic rocks of the coast in the greater part of its circumference. I do not know whether the other islands of the Archipelago are fringed; I have coloured Peel Island red.--GRAMPUS Island to the eastward, does not appear (Meare's "Voyage," page 95) to have any reefs, nor does ROSARIO Island (from Lutke's chart), which lies to the westward. Respecting the few other islands in this part of the sea, namely the SULPHUR Islands, with an active volcano, and those lying between Bonin and Japan (which are situated near the extreme limit in latitude, at which reefs are formed), I have not been able to find any clear account.

WEST END OF NEW GUINEA.

PORT DORY. From the charts in the "Voyage of the 'Coquille'," it would appear that the coast in this part is fringed by coral-reefs; M. Lesson, however, remarks that the coral is sickly; coloured red.--WAIGIOU. A considerable portion of the northern shores of these islands is seen in the charts (on a large scale) in Freycinet's "Atlas" to be fringed by coral-reefs. Forrest (page 21, "Voyage to New Guinea") alludes to the coral-reefs lining the heads of Piapis Bay; and Horsburgh (volume ii., page 599, 4th edition), speaking of the islands in Dampier Strait, says "sharp coral-rocks line their shores;" coloured red.--In the sea north of these islands, we have GUEDES (or FREEWILL, or ST. DAVID'S), which from the chart given in the 4to edition of Carteret's "Voyage," must be an atoll. Krusenstern says the islets are very low; coloured blue.--CARTERET'S SHOALS, in 2 deg 53' N., are described as circular, with stony points showing all round, with deeper water in the middle; coloured blue.--AIOU; the plan of this group, given in the "Atlas of the Voyage of the 'Astrolabe'," shows that it is an atoll; and, from a chart in Forrest's "Voyage," it appears that there is twelve fathoms within the circular reef; coloured blue.--The S.W. coast of New Guinea appears to be low, muddy, and devoid of reefs. The ARRU, TIMOR-LAUT, and TENIMBER groups have lately been examined by Captain Kolff, the MS. translation of which, by Mr. W. Earl, I have been permitted to read, through the kindness of Captain Washington, R.N. These islands are mostly rather low, and are surrounded by distant reefs (the Ki Islands, however, are lofty, and, from Mr. Stanley's survey, appear without reefs); the sea in some parts is shallow, in others profoundly deep (as near Larrat). From the imperfection of the published charts, I have been unable to decide to which class these reefs belong. From the distance to which they extend from the land, where the sea is very deep, I am strongly inclined to believe they ought to come within the barrier class, and be coloured blue; but I have been forced to leave them uncoloured.--The last-mentioned groups are connected with the east end of Ceram by a chain of small islands, of which the small groups of CERAM-LAUT, GORAM and KEFFING are surrounded by very extensive reefs, projecting into deep water, which, as in the last case, I strongly suspect belong to the barrier class; but I have not coloured them. From the south side of Keffing, the reefs project five miles (Windsor Earl's "Sailing Direct. for the Arafura Sea," page 9).

CERAM.

In various charts which I have examined, several parts of the coast are represented as fringed by reefs.--MANIPA Island, between Ceram and Bourou, in an old MS. chart in the Admiralty, is fringed by a very irregular reef, partly dry at low water, which I do not doubt is of coral-formation; both islands coloured red.--BOUROU; parts of this island appear fringed by coral-reefs, namely, the eastern coast, as seen in Freycinet's chart; and CAJELI BAY, which is said by Horsburgh (volume ii., page 630) to be lined by coral-reefs, that stretch out a little way, and have only a few feet water on them. In several charts, portions of the islands forming the AMBOINA GROUP are fringed by reefs; for instance, NOESSA, HARENCA, and UCASTER, in Freycinet's charts. The above-mentioned islands have been coloured red, although the evidence is not very satisfactory.--North of Bourou the parallel line of the XULLA Isles extends: I have not been able to find out anything about them, excepting that Horsburgh (volume ii., page 543) says that the northern shore is surrounded by a reef at the distance of two or three miles; uncoloured.--MYSOL GROUP; the Kanary Islands are said by Forrest ("Voyage," page 130) to be divided from each other by deep straits, and are lined with coral-rocks; coloured red.--GUEBE, lying between Waigiou and Gilolo, is engraved as if fringed; and it is said by Freycinet, that all the soundings under five fathoms were on coral; coloured red.--GILOLO. In a chart published by Dalrymple, the numerous islands on the western, southern (BATCHIAN and the STRAIT OF PATIENTIA), and eastern sides appear fringed by narrow reefs; these reefs, I suppose, are of coral, for it is said in "Malte Brun" (volume xii., page 156), "Sur les cotes (of Batchian) comme DANS LES PLUPART des iles de cet archipel, il y a de rocs de medrepores d'une beaute et d'une variete infimies." Forrest, also (page 50), says Seland, near Batchian, is a little island with reefs of coral; coloured red.--MORTY Island (north of Gilolo). Horsburgh (volume ii., page 506) says the northern coast is lined by reefs, projecting one or two miles, and having no soundings close to them; I have left it uncoloured, although, as in some former cases, it ought probably to be pale blue.--CELEBES. The western and northern coasts appear in the charts to be bold and without reefs. Near the extreme northern point, however, an islet in the STRAITS OF LIMBE, and parts of the adjoining shore, appear to be fringed: the east side of the bay of MANADO, has deep water, and is fringed by sand and coral ("'Astrol.' Voyage," Hydrog. Part, pages 453-4); this extreme point, therefore, I have coloured red.--Of the islands leading from this point to Magindanao, I have not been able to find any account, except of SERANGANI, which appears surrounded by narrow reefs; and Forrest ("Voyage," page 164) speaks of coral on its shores; I have, therefore, coloured this island red. To the eastward of this chain lie several islands; of which I cannot find any account, except of KARKALANG, which is said by Horsburgh (volume ii., page 504) to be lined by a dangerous reef, projecting several miles from the northern shore; not coloured.

ISLANDS NEAR TIMOR.

The account of the following islands is taken from Captain D. Kolff's "Voyage," in 1825, translated by Mr. W. Earl, from the Dutch.--LETTE has "reefs extending along shore at the distance of half a mile from the land."--MOA has reefs on the S.W. part.--LAKOR has a reef lining its shore; these islands are coloured red.--Still more eastward, LUAN has, differently from the last-mentioned islands, an extensive reef; it is steep outside, and within there is a depth of twelve feet; from these facts, it is impossible to decide to which class this island belongs.--KISSA, off the point of Timor, has its "shore fronted by a reef, steep too on the outer side, over which small proahs can go at the time of high water;" coloured red.--TIMOR; most of the points, and some considerable spaces of the northern shore, are seen in Freycinet's chart to be fringed by coral-reefs; and mention is made of them in the accompanying "Hydrog. Memoir;" coloured red.--SAVU, S.E. of Timor, appears in Flinders' chart to be fringed; but I have not coloured it, as I do not know that the reefs are of coral.-- SANDALWOOD Island has, according to Horsburgh (volume ii., page 607), a reef on its southern shore, four miles distant from the land; as the neighbouring sea is deep, and generally bold, this probably is a barrier- reef, but I have not ventured to colour it.

N.W. COAST OF AUSTRALIA.

It appears, in Captain King's Sailing Directions ("Narrative of Survey," volume ii, pages 325-369), that there are many extensive coral-reefs skirting, often at considerable distances, the N.W. shores, and encompassing the small adjoining islets. Deep water, in no instance, is represented in the charts between these reefs and the land; and, therefore, they probably belong to the fringing class. But as they extend far into the sea, which is generally shallow, even in places where the land seems to be somewhat precipitous; I have not coloured them. Houtman's Abrolhos (latitude 28 deg S. on west coast) have lately been surveyed by Captain Wickham (as described in "Naut. Mag." 1841, page 511): they lie on the edge of a steeply shelving bank, which extends about thirty miles seaward, along the whole line of coast. The two southern reefs, or islands, enclose a lagoon-like space of water, varying in depth from five to fifteen fathoms, and in one spot with twenty-three fathoms. The greater part of the island has been formed on their inland sides, by the accumulation of fragments of coral; the seaward face consisting of nearly bare ledges of rock. Some of the specimens, brought home by Captain Wickham, contained fragments of marine shells, but others did not; and these closely resembled a formation at King George's Sound, principally due to the action of the wind on calcareous dust, which I shall describe in a forthcoming part. From the extreme irregularity of these reefs with their lagoons, and from their position on a bank, the usual depth of which is only thirty fathoms, I have not ventured to class them with atolls, and hence have left them uncoloured.--ROWLEY SHOALS. These lie some way from the N.W. coast of Australia: according to Captain King ("Narrative of Survey," volume i., page 60), they are of coral-formation. They rise abruptly from the sea, and Captain King had no bottom with 170 fathoms close to them. Three of them are crescent-shaped; they are mentioned by Mr. Lyell, on the authority of Captain King, with reference to the direction of their open sides. "A third oval reef of the same group is entirely submerged" ("Principles of Geology," book iii. chapter xviii.); coloured blue.--SCOTT'S REEFS, lying north of Rowley Shoals, are briefly described by Captain Wickham ("Naut. Mag." 1841, page 440): they appear to be of great size, of a circular form, and "with smooth water within, forming probably a lagoon of great extent." There is a break on the western side, where there probably is an entrance: the water is very deep off these reefs; coloured blue.

Proceeding westward along the great volcanic chain of the East Indian Archipelago, SOLOR STRAIT is represented in a chart published by Dalrymple from a Dutch MS., as fringed; as are parts of FLORES, of ADENARA, and of SOLOR. Horsburgh speaks of coral growing on these shores; and therefore I have no doubt that the reefs are of coral, and accordingly have coloured them red. We hear from Horsburgh (volume ii., page 602) that a coral-flat bounds the shores of SAPY Bay. From the same authority it appears (page 610) that reefs fringe the island of TIMOR-YOUNG, on the N. shore of Sumbawa; and, likewise (page 600), that BALLY town in LOMBOCK, is fronted by a reef, stretching along the shore at a distance of a hundred fathoms, with channels through it for boats; these places, therefore, have been coloured red.--BALLY Island. In a Dutch MS. chart on a large scale of Java, which was brought from that island by Dr. Horsfield, who had the kindness to show it me at the India House, its western, northern, and southern shores appear very regularly fringed by a reef (see also Horsburgh, volume ii., page 593); and as coral is found abundantly there, I have not the least doubt that the reef is of coral, and therefore have coloured it red.

JAVA.

My information regarding the reefs of this great island is derived from the chart just mentioned. The greater part of MADUARA is represented in it as regularly fringed, and likewise portions of the coast of Java immediately south of it. Dr. Horsfield informs me that coral is very abundant near SOURABAYA. The islets and parts of the N. coast of Java, west of POINT BUANG, or JAPARA, are fringed by reefs, said to be of coral. LUBECK, or BAVIAN Islands, lying at some distance from the shore of Java, are regularly fringed by coral-reefs. CARIMON JAVA appears equally so, though it is not directly said that the reefs are of coral; there is a depth between thirty and forty fathoms round these islands. Parts of the shores of SUNDA STRAIT, where the water is from forty to eighty fathoms deep, and the islets near BATAVIA appear in several charts to be fringed. In the Dutch chart the southern shore, in the narrowest part of the island, is in two places fringed by reefs of coral. West of SEGORROWODEE Bay, and the extreme S.E. and E. portions are likewise fringed by coral-reefs; all the above-mentioned places coloured red.

MACASSAR STRAIT.

The EAST COAST OF Borneo appears, in most parts, free from reefs, and where they occur, as on the east coast of PAMAROONG, the sea is very shallow; hence no part is coloured. In MACASSAR Strait itself, in about latitude 2 deg S., there are many small islands with coral-shoals projecting far from them. There are also (old charts by Dalrymple) numerous little flats of coral, not rising to the surface of the water, and shelving suddenly from five fathoms to no bottom with fifty fathoms; they do not appear to have a lagoon-like structure. There are similar coral-shoals a little farther south; and in latitude 4 deg 55' there are two, which are engraved from modern surveys, in a manner which might represent an annular reef with deep water inside: Captain Moresby, however, who was formerly in this sea, doubts this fact, so that I have left them uncoloured: at the same time I may remark, that these two shoals make a nearer approach to the atoll-like structure than any other within the E. Indian Archipelago. Southward of these shoals there are other low islands and irregular coral-reefs; and in the space of sea, north of the great volcanic chain, from Timor to Java, we have also other islands, such as the POSTILLIONS, KALATOA, TOKAN-BESSEES, etc., which are chiefly low, and are surrounded by very irregular and distant reefs. From the imperfect charts I have seen, I have not been able to decide whether they belong to the atoll or barrier-classes, or whether they merely fringe submarine banks, and gently sloping land. In the Bay of BONIN, between the two southern arms of Celebes, there are numerous coral- reefs; but none of them seem to have an atoll-like structure. I have, therefore, not coloured any of the islands in this part of the sea; I think it, however, exceedingly probable that some of them ought to be blue. I may add that there is a harbour on the S.E. coast of BOUTON which, according to an old chart, is formed by a reef, parallel to the shore, with deep water within; and in the "Voyage of the 'Coquille'," some neighbouring islands are represented with reefs a good way distant, but I do not know whether with deep water within. I have not thought the evidence sufficient to permit me to colour them.

SUMATRA.

Commencing with the west coast and outlying islands, ENGANO Island is represented in the published chart as surrounded by a narrow reef, and Napier, in his "Sailing Directions," speaks of the reef being of coral (also Horsburgh, volume ii., page 115); coloured red.--RAT Island (3 deg 51' S.) is surrounded by reefs of coral, partly dry at low water, (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 96).--TRIESTE Island (4 deg 2' S.). The shore is represented in a chart which I saw at the India House, as fringed in such a manner, that I feel sure the fringe consists of coral; but as the island is so low, that the sea sometimes flows quite over it (Dampier, "Voyage," volume i., page 474), I have not coloured it.--PULO DOOA (latitude 3 deg). In an old chart it is said there are chasms in the reefs round the island, admitting boats to the watering-place, and that the southern islet consists of a mass of sand and coral.--PULO PISANG; Horsburgh (volume ii., page 86) says that the rocky coral-bank, which stretches about forty yards from the shore, is steep to all round: in a chart, also, which I have seen, the island is represented as regularly fringed.--PULO MINTAO is lined with reefs on its west side (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 107).--PULO BANIAK; the same authority (volume ii., page 105), speaking of a part, says it is faced with coral-rocks.--MINGUIN (3 deg 36' N.). A coral-reef fronts this place, and projects into the sea nearly a quarter of a mile ("Notices of the Indian Arch." published at Singapore, page 105).--PULO BRASSA (5 deg 46' N.). A reef surrounds it at a cable's length (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 60). I have coloured all the above-specified points red. I may here add, that both Horsburgh and Mr. Moor (in the "Notices" just alluded to) frequently speak of the numerous reefs and banks of coral on the west coast of Sumatra; but these nowhere have the structure of a barrier-reef, and Marsden ("History of Sumatra") states, that where the coast is flat, the fringing-reefs extend furthest from it. The northern and southern points, and the greater part of the east coast, are low, and faced with mud banks, and therefore without coral.

NICOBAR ISLANDS.

The chart represents the islands of this group as fringed by reefs. With regard to GREAT NICOBAR, Captain Moresby informs me, that it is fringed by reefs of coral, extending between two and three hundred yards from the shore. The NORTHERN NICOBARS appear so regularly fringed in the published charts, that I have no doubt the reefs are of coral. This group, therefore, is coloured red.

ANDAMAN ISLANDS.

From an examination of the MS. chart, on a large scale, of this island, by Captain Arch. Blair, in the Admiralty, several portions of the coast appear fringed; and as Horsburgh speaks of coral-reefs being numerous in the vicinity of these islands, I should have coloured them red, had not some expressions in a paper in the "Asiatic Researches" (volume iv., page 402) led me to doubt the existence of reefs; uncoloured.

The coast of MALACCA, TENASSERIM and the coasts northward, appear in the greater part to be low and muddy: where reefs occur, as in parts of MALACCA STRAITS, and near SINGAPORE, they are of the fringing kind; but the water is so shoal, that I have not coloured them. In the sea, however, between Malacca and the west coast of Borneo, where there is a greater depth from forty to fifty fathoms, I have coloured red some of the groups, which are regularly fringed. The northern NATUNAS and the ANAMBAS Islands are represented in the charts on a large scale, published in the "Atlas of the Voyage of the 'Favourite'," as fringed by reefs of coral, with very shoal water within them.--TUMBELAN and BUNOA Islands (1 deg N.) are represented in the English charts as surrounded by a very regular fringe.-- ST. BARBES (0 deg 15' N.) is said by Horsburgh (volume ii., page 279) to be fronted by a reef, over which boats can land only at high water.--The shore of BORNEO at TUNJONG APEE is also fronted by a reef, extending not far from the land (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 468). These places I have coloured red; although with some hesitation, as the water is shallow. I might perhaps have added PULO LEAT, in Gaspar Strait, LUCEPARA, and CARIMATA; but as the sea is confined and shallow, and the reefs not very regular, I have left them uncoloured.

The water shoals gradually towards the whole west coast of BORNEO: I cannot make out that it has any reefs of coral. The islands, however, off the northern extremity, and near the S.W. end of PALAWAN, are fringed by very distant coral-reefs; thus the reefs in the case of BALABAC are no less than five miles from the land; but the sea, in the whole of this district, is so shallow, that the reefs might be expected to extend very far from the land. I have not, therefore, thought myself authorised to colour them. The N.E. point of Borneo, where the water is very shoal, is connected with Magindanao by a chain of islands called the SOOLOO ARCHIPELAGO, about which I have been able to obtain very little information; PANGOOTARAN, although ten miles long, entirely consists of a bed of coral-rock ("Notices of E. Indian Arch." page 58): I believe from Horsburgh that the island is low; not coloured.--TAHOW BANK, in some old charts, appears like a submerged atoll; not coloured. Forrest ("Voyage," page 21) states that one of the islands near Sooloo is surrounded by coral-rocks; but there is no distant reef. Near the S. end of BASSELAN, some of the islets in the chart accompanying Forrest's "Voyage," appear fringed with reefs; hence I have coloured, though unwillingly, parts of the Sooloo group red. The sea between Sooloo and Palawan, near the shoal coast of Borneo, is interspersed with irregular reefs and shoal patches; not coloured: but in the northern part of this sea, there are two low islets, CAGAYANES and CAVILLI, surrounded by extensive coral-reefs; the breakers round the latter (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 513) extend five or six miles from a sandbank, which forms the only dry part; these breakers are steep to outside; there appears to be an opening through them on one side, with four or five fathoms within: from this description, I strongly suspect that Cavilli ought to be considered an atoll; but, as I have not seen any chart of it, on even a moderately large scale, I have not coloured it. The islets off the northern end of PALAWAN, are in the same case as those off the southern end, namely they are fringed by reefs, some way distant from the shore, but the water is exceedingly shallow; uncoloured. The western shore of Palawan will be treated of under the head of China Sea.

PHILIPPINE ARCHIPELAGO.

A chart on a large scale of APPOO SHOAL, which lies near the S.E. coast of Mindoro, has been executed by Captain D. Ross: it appears atoll-formed, but with rather an irregular outline; its diameter is about ten miles; there are two well-defined passages leading into the interior lagoon, which appears open; close outside the reef all round, there is no bottom with seventy fathoms; coloured blue.--MINDORO: the N.W. coast is represented in several charts, as fringed by a reef, and LUBAN Island is said, by Horsburgh (volume ii., page 436), to be "lined by a reef."--LUZON: Mr. Cuming, who has lately investigated with so much success the Natural History of the Philippines, informs me, that about three miles of the shore north of Point St. Jago, is fringed by a reef; as are (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 437) the Three Friars off Silanguin Bay. Between Point Capones and Playa Honda, the coast is "lined by a coral-reef, stretching out nearly a mile in some places," (Horsburgh); and Mr. Cuming visited some fringing- reefs on parts of this coast, namely, near Puebla, Iba, and Mansinglor. In the neighbourhood of Solon-solon Bay, the shore is lined (Horsburgh ii., page 439) by coral-reefs, stretching out a great way: there are also reefs about the islets off Solamague; and as I am informed by Mr. Cuming, near St. Catalina, and a little north of it. The same gentleman informs me there are reefs on the S.E. point of this island in front of Samar, extending from Malalabon to Bulusan. These appear to be the principal fringing-reefs on the coasts of Luzon; and they have all been coloured red. Mr. Cuming informs me that none of them have deep water within; although it appears from Horsburgh that some few extend to a considerable distance from the shore. Within the Philippine Archipelago, the shores of the islands do not appear to be commonly fringed, with the exception of the S. shore of MASBATE, and nearly the whole of BOHOL; which are both coloured red. On the S. shore of MAGINDANAO, Bunwoot Island is surrounded (according to Forrest, "Voyage," page 253), by a coral-reef, which in the chart appears one of the fringing class. With respect to the eastern coasts of the whole Archipelago, I have not been able to obtain any account.

BABUYAN ISLANDS.

Horsburgh says (volume ii., page 442), coral-reefs line the shores of the harbour in Fuga; and the charts show there are other reefs about these islands. Camiguin has its shore in parts lined by coral-rock (Horsburgh, page 443); about a mile off shore there is between thirty and thirty-five fathoms. The plan of Port San Pio Quinto shows that its shores are fringed with coral; coloured red.--BASHEE Islands: Horsburgh, speaking of the southern part of the group (volume ii., page 445) says the shores of both islands are fortified by a reef, and through some of the gaps in it, the natives can pass in their boats in fine weather; the bottom near the land is coral-rock. From the published charts, it is evident that several of these islands are most regularly fringed; coloured red. The northern islands are left uncoloured, as I have been unable to find any account of them.--FORMOSA. The shores, especially the western one, seem chiefly composed of mud and sand, and I cannot make out that they are anywhere lined by reefs; except in a harbour (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 449) at the extreme northern point: hence, of course, the whole of this island is left uncoloured. The small adjoining islands are in the same case.-- PATCHOW, or MADJIKO-SIMA GROUPS. PATCHUSON has been described by Captain Broughton ("Voy. to the N. Pacific," page 191); he says, the boats, with some difficulty, found a passage through the coral-reefs, which extend along the coast, nearly half a mile off it. The boats were well sheltered within the reef; but it does not appear that the water is deep there. Outside the reef the depth is very irregular, varying from five to fifty fathoms; the form of the land is not very abrupt; coloured red.--TAYPIN- SAN; from the description given (page 195) by the same author, it appears that a very irregular reef extends, to the distance of several miles, from the southern island; but whether it encircles a space of deep water is not evident; nor, indeed, whether these outlying reefs are connected with those more immediately adjoining the land; left uncoloured. I may here just add that the shore of KUMI (lying west of Patchow), has a narrow reef attached to it in the plan of it, in La Peyrouse's "Atlas;" but it does not appear in the account of the voyage that it is of coral; uncoloured.--LOO CHOO. The greater part of the coast of this moderately hilly island, is skirted by reefs, which do not extend far from the shore, and which do not leave a channel of deep water within them, as may be seen in the charts accompanying Captain B. Hall's voyage to Loo Choo (see also remarks in Appendix, pages xxi. and xxv.). There are, however, some ports with deep water, formed by reefs in front of valleys, in the same manner as happens at Mauritius. Captain Beechey, in a letter to me, compares these reefs with those encircling the Society Islands; but there appears to me a marked difference between them, in the less distance at which the Loo Choo reefs lie from the land with relation to the probable submarine inclination, and in the absence of an interior deep water-moat or channel, parallel to the land. Hence, I have classed these reefs with fringing-reefs, and coloured them red.--PESCADORES (west of Formosa). Dampier (volume i., page 416), has compared the appearance of the land to the southern parts of England. The islands are interlaced with coral-reefs; but as the water is very shoal, and as spits of sand and gravel (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 450) extend far out from them, it is impossible to draw any inferences regarding the nature of the reefs.

CHINA SEA.--Proceeding from north to south, we first meet the PRATAS SHOAL (latitude 20 deg N.) which, according to Horsburgh (volume ii., page 335), is composed of coral, is of a circular form, and has a low islet on it. The reef is on a level with the water's edge, and when the sea runs high, there are breakers mostly all round, "but the water within seems pretty deep in some places; although steep-to in most parts outside, there appear to be several parts where a ship might find anchorage outside the breakers;" coloured blue.--The PARACELLS have been accurately surveyed by Captain D. Ross, and charts on a large scale published: but few low islets have been formed on these shoals, and this seems to be a general circumstance in the China Sea; the sea close outside the reefs is very deep; several of them have a lagoon-like structure; or separate islets (PRATTLE, ROBERT, DRUMMOND, etc.) are so arranged round a moderately shallow space, as to appear as if they had once formed one large atoll.-- BOMBAY SHOAL (one of the Paracells) has the form of an annular reef, and is "apparently deep within;" it seems to have an entrance (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 332) on its west side; it is very steep outside.--DISCOVERY SHOAL, also is of an oval form, with a lagoon-like space within, and three openings leading into it, in which there is a depth from two to twenty fathoms. Outside, at the distance (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 333) of only twenty yards from the reef, soundings could not be obtained. The Paracells are coloured blue.--MACCLESFIELD BANK: this is a coral-bank of great size, lying east of the Paracells; some parts of the bank are level, with a sandy bottom, but, generally, the depth is very irregular. It is intersected by deep cuts or channels. I am not able to perceive in the published charts (its limits, however, are not very accurately known) whether the central part is deeper, which I suspect is the case, as in the Great Chagos Bank, in the Indian Ocean; not coloured.--SCARBOROUGH SHOAL: this coral-shoal is engraved with a double row of crosses, forming a circle, as if there was deep water within the reef: close outside there was no bottom, with a hundred fathoms; coloured blue.--The sea off the west coast of Palawan and the northern part of Borneo is strewed with shoals: SWALLOW SHOAL, according to Horsburgh (volume ii., page 431) "is formed, LIKE MOST of the shoals hereabouts, of a belt of coral-rocks, "with a basin of deep water within."--HALF-MOON SHOAL has a similar structure; Captain D. Ross describes it, as a narrow belt of coral-rock, "with a basin of deep water in the centre," and deep sea close outside.--BOMBAY SHOAL appears (Horsburgh, volume ii., page 432) "to be a basin of smooth water surrounded by breakers." These three shoals I have coloured blue.--The PARAQUAS SHOALS are of a circular form, with deep gaps running through them; not coloured.--A bank gradually shoaling to the depth of thirty fathoms, extends to a distance of about twenty miles from the northern part of BORNEO, and to thirty miles from the northern part of PALAWAN. Near the land this bank appears tolerably free from danger, but a little further out it is thickly studded with coral-shoals, which do not generally rise quite to the surface; some of them are very steep-to, and others have a fringe of shoal-water round them. I should have thought that these shoals had level surfaces, had it not been for the statement made by Horsburgh "that most of the shoals hereabouts are formed of a belt of coral." But, perhaps that expression was more particularly applied to the shoals further in the offing. If these reefs of coral have a lagoon-like structure, they should have been coloured blue, and they would have formed an imperfect barrier in front of Palawan and the northern part of Borneo. But, as the water is not very deep, these reefs may have grown up from inequalities on the bank: I have not coloured them.--The coast of CHINA, TONQUIN, and COCHIN-CHINA, forming the western boundary of the China Sea, appear to be without reefs: with regard to the two last-mentioned coasts, I speak after examining the charts on a large scale in the "Atlas of the Voyage of the 'Favourite'."

INDIAN OCEAN.

SOUTH KEELING atoll has been specially described. Nine miles north of it lies North Keeling, a very small atoll, surveyed by the "Beagle," the lagoon of which is dry at low water.--CHRISTMAS Island, lying to the east, is a high island, without, as I have been informed by a person who passed it, any reefs at all.--CEYLON: a space about eighty miles in length of the south-western and southern shores of these islands has been described by Mr. Twynam ("Naut. Mag." 1836, pages 365 and 518); parts of this space appear to be very regularly fringed by coral-reefs, which extend from a quarter to half a mile from the shore. These reefs are in places breached, and afford safe anchorage for the small trading craft. Outside, the sea gradually deepens; there is forty fathoms about six miles off shore: this part I have coloured red. In the published charts of Ceylon there appear to be fringing-reefs in several parts of the south-eastern shores, which I have also coloured red.--At Venloos Bay the shore is likewise fringed. North of Trincomalee there are also reefs of the same kind. The sea off the northern part of Ceylon is exceedingly shallow; and therefore I have not coloured the reefs which fringe portions of its shores, and the adjoining islets, as well as the Indian promontory of MADURA.

CHAGOS, MALDIVA, AND LACCADIVE ARCHIPELAGOES.

These three great groups which have already been often noticed, are now well-known from the admirable surveys of Captain Moresby and Lieutenant Powell. The published charts, which are worthy of the most attentive examination, at once show that the CHAGOS and MALDIVA groups are entirely formed of great atolls, or lagoon-formed reefs, surmounted by islets. In the LACCADIVE group, this structure is less evident; the islets are low, not exceeding the usual height of coral-formations (see Lieutenant Wood's account, "Geographical Journal", volume vi., page 29), and most of the reefs are circular, as may be seen in the published charts; and within several of them, as I am informed by Captain Moresby, there is deepish water; these, therefore, have been coloured blue. Directly north, and almost forming part of this group, there is a long, narrow, slightly curved bank, rising out of the depths of the ocean, composed of sand, shells, and decayed coral, with from twenty-three to thirty fathoms on it. I have no doubt that it has had the same origin with the other Laccadive banks; but as it does not deepen towards the centre I have not coloured it. I might have referred to other authorities regarding these three archipelagoes; but after the publication of the charts by Captain Moresby, to whose personal kindness in giving me much information I am exceedingly indebted, it would have been superfluous.

SAHIA DE MALHA bank consists of a series of narrow banks, with from eight to sixteen fathoms on them; they are arranged in a semicircular manner, round a space about forty fathoms deep, which slopes on the S.E. quarter to unfathomable depths; they are steep-to on both sides, but more especially on the ocean-side. Hence this bank closely resembles in structure, and I may add from Captain Moresby's information in composition, the Pitt's Bank in the Chagos group; and the Pitt's Bank, must, after what has been shown of the Great Chagos Bank, be considered as a sunken, half-destroyed atoll; hence coloured blue.--CARGADOS CARAJOS BANK. Its southern portion consists of a large, curved, coral-shoal, with some low islets on its eastern edge, and likewise some on the western side, between which there is a depth of about twelve fathoms. Northward, a great bank extends. I cannot (probably owing to the want of perfect charts) refer this reef and bank to any class;--therefore not coloured.--ILE DE SABLE is a little island, lying west of C. Carajos, only some toises in height ("Voyage of the 'Favourite'," volume i., page 130); it is surrounded by reefs; but its structure is unintelligible to me. There are some small banks north of it, of which I can find no clear account.--MAURITIUS. The reefs round this island have been described in the chapter on fringing-reefs; coloured red. --RODRIGUEZ. The coral-reefs here are exceedingly extensive; in one part they project even five miles from the shore. As far as I can make out, there is no deep-water moat within them; and the sea outside does not deepen very suddenly. The outline, however, of the land appears to be ("Life of Sir J. Makintosh," volume ii., page 165) hilly and rugged. I am unable to decide whether these reefs belong to the barrier class; as seems probable from their great extension, or to the fringing class; uncoloured. --BOURBON. The greater part of the shores of this island are without reefs; but Captain Carmichael (Hooker's "Bot. Misc.") states that a portion, fifteen miles in length, on the S.E. side, is imperfectly fringed with coral reefs: I have not thought this sufficient to colour the island.

"That I will do with the utmost willingness."

"You must become another person entirely; you must adopt his name, his gait, his behavior, his virtues, and even his failings. You must forget all that you have either said or done. You must always think that you are in reality the person you represent yourself to be, for this is the only way in which you can lead others into a similar belief. Your task will be a heavy one."

"Ah, sir," cried the young man, enthusiastically, "can you doubt me?"

"The glorious beam of success that shines ahead of you will take your attention from the difficulties and dangers of the road that you are treading."

The genial Dr. Hortebise rubbed his hands.

"You are right," cried he, "quite right."

"When you have done this," resumed Mascarin, "we shall not hesitate to acquaint you with the secret of the lofty destiny that awaits you. Do you understand me fully?"

Here the speaker was interrupted by the entrance of Beaumarchef, who had signified his desire to come in by three distinct raps upon the door. He was now gorgeous to look upon, for having taken advantage of a spare half hour, he had donned his best clothes.

"What is it?" demanded Mascarin.

"Here are two letters, sir."

"Thank you; hand them to me, and leave us."

As soon as they were once more alone, Mascarin examined the letters.

"Ah," cried he, "one from Van Klopen, and the other from the Hotel de Mussidan. Let us first see what our friend the man-milliner has to say.

"DEAR SIR,--

"You may be at ease. Our mutual friend Verminet has executed your orders most adroitly. At his instigation Gaston de Gandelu has forged the banker Martin Rigal's signature on five different bills. I hold them, and awaiting your further orders regarding them, and also with respect to Madame de Bois Arden,

"I remain your obedient servant, "VAN KLOPEN."

Tossing it on the table, Mascarin opened the other letter, which he also read aloud.

"SIR,--

"I have to report to you the breaking off of the marriage between Mademoiselle Sabine and M. de Breulh-Faverlay. Mademoiselle is very ill, and I heard the medical man say that she might not survive the next twenty-four hours.

"FLORESTAN."

Mascarin was so filled with rage on learning this piece of news, which seemed likely to interfere with his plans, that he struck his hand down heavily on the table.

"Damnation!" cried he. "If this little fool should die now, all our work will have to be recommenced."

He thrust aside his chair, and paced hurriedly up and down the room.

"Florestan is right," said he; "this illness of the girl comes on at the date of the rupture of the engagement. There is some secret that we must learn, for we dare not work in the dark."

"Shall I go to the Hotel de Mussidan?" asked Hortebise.

"Not a bad idea. Your carriage is waiting, is it not? You can go in your capacity as a medical man."

The doctor was preparing to go, when Mascarin arrested his progress.

"No," said he, "I have changed my mind. We must neither of us be seen near the place. I expect that one of our mines has exploded; that the Count and Countess have exchanged confidences, and that between the two the daughter has been struck down."

"How shall we find this out?"

"I will see Florestan and try and find out."

In an instant he vanished into his inner room, and as he changed his dress, continued to converse with the doctor.

"This blow would be comparatively trifling, if I had not so much on hand, but I have Paul to look after. The Champdoce affair must be pressed on, for Catenac, the traitor, has put the Duke and Perpignan into communication. I must see Perpignan and discover how much has been told him, and how much he has guessed. I will also see Caroline Schimmel, and extract something from her. I wish to heaven that there were thirty-six hours in the day instead of only twenty-four."

By this time he had completed his change of costume and called the doctor into his room.

"I am off, now," whispered he; "do not lose sight of Paul for a single instant, for we are not sufficiently sure of him to let him go about alone with our secret in his possession. Take him to dine at Martin Rigal's, and then make some excuse for keeping him all night at your rooms. See me to-morrow."

And he went out so hurriedly that he did not hear the cheery voice of the doctor calling after him,--

"Good luck; I wish you all good luck."

CHAPTER XIX.

A FRIENDLY RIVAL.

On leaving the Hotel de Mussidan, M. de Breulh-Faverlay dismissed his carriage, for he felt as a man often does after experiencing some violent emotion, the absolute necessity for exercise, and to be alone with his thoughts, and by so doing recover his self-possession. His friends would have been surprised if they had seen him pacing hurriedly along the Champs Elysees. The usual calm of his manner had vanished, and the generally calm expression of his features was entirely absent. As he walked, he talked to himself, and gesticulated.

"And this is what we call being a man of the world. We think ourselves true philosophers, and a look from a pair of beautiful, pleading eyes scatters all our theories to the winds."

He had loved Sabine upon the day on which he had asked for her hand, but not so fondly as upon this day when he had learned that she could no longer be his wife, for, from the moment he had made this discovery, she seemed to him more gifted and fascinating than ever. No one could have believed that he, the idol of society, the petted darling of the women, and the successful rival of the men, could have been refused by the young girl to whom he had offered his hand.

"Yes," murmured he with a sigh, "for she is just the companion for life that I longed for. Where could I find so intelligent an intellect and so pure a mind, united with such radiant beauty, so different from the women of society, who live but for dress and gossip. Has Sabine anything in common with those giddy girls who look upon life as a perpetual value, and who take a husband as they do a partner, because they cannot dance without one? How her face lighted up as she spoke of him, and how thoroughly she puts faith in him! The end of it all is that I shall die a bachelor. In my old age I will take to the pleasures of the table, for an excellent authority declares that a man can enjoy his four meals a day with comfort. Well, that is something to look forward to certainly, and it will not impair my digestion if my heirs and expectants come and squabble round my armchair. Ah," he added, with a deep sigh, "my life has been a failure."

M. de Breulh-Faverlay was a very different type of man to that which both his friends and his enemies popularly supposed him to be. Upon the death of his uncle, he had plunged into the frivolous vortex of Parisian dissipation, but of this he had soon wearied.

All that he had cared for was to see the doings of his racehorse chronicled in the sporting journals, and occasionally to expend a few thousand francs in presents of jewelry to some fashionable actress. But he had secretly longed for some more honorable manner of fulfilling his duties in life, and he had determined that before his marriage he would sell his stud and break with his old associates entirely; and now this wished-for marriage would never take place.

When he entered his club, the traces of his agitation were so visible upon his face, that some of the card-players stopped their game to inquire if Chambertin, the favorite for the Chantilly cup, had broken down.

"No, no," replied he, as he hurriedly made his way to the writing- room, "Chambertin is as sound as a bell."

"What the deuce has happened to De Breulh?" asked one of the members.

"Goodness gracious!" remarked the man to whom the question was addressed, "he seems in a hurry to write a letter."

The gentleman was right. M. de Breulh was writing a withdrawal from his demand for Sabine's hand to M. de Mussidan, and he found the task by no means an easy one, for on reading it over he found that there was a valid strain of bitterness throughout it, which would surely attract attention and perhaps cause embarrassing questions to be put to him.

"No," murmured he, "this letter is quite unworthy of me." And tearing it up, he began another, in which he strung together several conventional excuses, alleging the difficulty of breaking off his former habits and of an awkward entanglement which he had been unable to break with, as he had anticipated. When this little masterpiece of diplomacy was completed, he rang the bell, and, handing it to one of the club servants, told him to take it to the Count de Mussidan's house. When this unpleasant duty was over, M. de Breulh had hoped to experience some feeling of relief, but in this he was mistaken. He tried cards, but rose from the table in a quarter of an hour; he ordered dinner, but appetite was wanting; he went to the opera, but then he did nothing but yawn, and the music grated on his nerves. At length he returned home. The day had seemed interminable, and he could not sleep, for Sabine's face was ever before him. Who could this man be whom she so fondly loved and preferred before all others? He respected her too much not to feel assured that her choice was a worthy one, but his experience had taught him that when so many men of the world fell into strange entanglements, a poor girl without knowledge of the dangers around her might easily be entrapped. "If he is worthy of her," thought he, "I will do my best to aid her; but if not, I will open her eyes."

At four o'clock in the morning he was still seated musing before the expiring embers of his fire; he had made up his mind to see Andre-- there was no difficulty in this, for a man of taste and wealth can find a ready excuse for visiting the studio of a struggling artist. He had no fixed plan as to what he would say or do, he left all to chance, and with this decision he went to bed, and by two in the afternoon he drove straight to the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne.

Andre's discreet portress was as usual leaning on her boom in the gallery as M. de Breulh's magnificent equipage drew up.

"Gracious me!" exclaimed the worthy woman, dazzled by the gorgeousness of the whole turnout; "he can't be coming here, he must have mistaken the house."

But her amazement reach its height when M. de Breulh, on alighting, asked for Andre.

"Fourth story, first door to the right," answered the woman; "but I will show you the way."

"Don't trouble yourself;" and with these words M. de Breulh ascended the staircase that led to the painter's studio and knocked on the door. As he did so, he heard a quick, light step upon the stairs, and a young and very dark man, dressed in a weaver's blouse and carrying a tin pail which he had evidently just filled with water from the cistern, came up.

"Are you M. Andre?" asked De Breulh.

"That is my name, sir."

"I wish to say a few words to you."

"Pray come in," replied the young artist, opening the door of his studio and ushering his visitor in. Andre's voice and expression had made a favorable impression upon his visitor; but he was, in spite of his having thrown aside nearly all foolish prejudices, a little startled at his costume. He did not, however, allow his surprise to be visible.

"I ought to apologize for receiving you like this," remarked Andre quickly, "but a poor man must wait upon himself." As he spoke, he threw off his blouse and set down the pail in a corner of the room.

"I rather should offer my excuse for my intrusion," returned M. de Breulh. "I came here by the advice of one of my friends;" he stopped for an instant, endeavoring to think of a name.

"By Prince Crescensi, perhaps," suggested Andre.

"Yes, yes," continued M. de Breulh, eagerly snatching at the rope the artist held out to him. "The Prince sings your praises everywhere, and speaks of your talents with the utmost enthusiasm. I am, on his recommendation, desirous of commissioning you to paint a picture for me, and I can assure you that in my gallery it will have no need to be ashamed of its companions."

Andre bowed, coloring deeply at the compliment.

"I am obliged to you," said he, "and I trust that you will not be disappointed in taking the Prince's opinion of my talent."

"Why should I be so?"

"Because, for the last four months I have been so busy that I have really nothing to show you."

"That is of no importance. I have every confidence in you."

"Then," returned Andre, "all that we have to do is to choose a subject."

Andre's manner had by this time so captivated De Breulh that he muttered to himself, "I really ought to hate this fellow, but on my word I like him better than any one I have met for a long time."

Andre had by this time placed a large portfolio on the table. "Here," said he, "are some twenty or thirty sketches; if any of them took your fancy, you could make your choice."

"Let me see them," returned De Breulh politely, for having made an estimate of the young man's character, he now wished to see what his artistic talents were like. With this object in view he examined all the sketches in the portfolio minutely, and then turned to those on the walls. Andre said nothing, but he somehow felt that this visit would prove the turning-point of his misfortunes. But for all that the young man's heart was very sad, for it was two days since Sabine had left him, promising to write to him the next morning regarding M. de Breulh-Faverlay, but as yet he had received no communication, and he was on the tenterhooks of expectation, not because he had any doubt of Sabine, but for the reason that he had no means of obtaining any information of what went on in the interior of the Hotel de Mussidan. M. de Breulh had now finished his survey, and had come to the conclusion that though many of Andre's productions were crude and lacking in finish, yet that he had the true artistic metal in him. He extended his hand to the young man and said forcibly, "I am no longer influenced by the opinion of a friend. I have seen and judged for myself, and am more desirous than ever of possessing one of your pictures. I have made my choice of a subject, and now let us discuss the details."

As he spoke he handed a little sketch to Andre. It was a view of everyday life, which the painter had entitled, "Outside the Barrier." Two men with torn garments and wine-flushed faces were struggling in tipsy combat, while on the right hand side of the picture lay a woman, bleeding profusely from a cut on the forehead, and two of her terrified companions were bending over her, endeavoring to restore her to consciousness. In the background were some flying figures, who were hastening up to separate the combatants. The sketch was one of real life, denuded of any sham element of romance, and this was the one that M. de Breulh had chosen. The two men discussed the size of the picture, and not a single detail was omitted.

"I am sure that you will do all that is right," remarked De Breulh. "Let your own inspiration guide you, and all will be well." In reality he was dying to get away, for he felt in what a false position he was, and with a violent effort he approached the money part of the matter.

"Monsieur," said Andre, "it is impossible to fix a price; when completed, a picture may only be worth the canvas that it is painted on, or else beyond all price. Let us wait."

"Well," broke in M. de Breulh, "what do you say to ten thousand francs?"

"Too much," returned Andre with a deprecatory wave of his hand; "far too much. If I succeed in it, as I hope to do, I will ask six thousand francs for it."

"Agreed!" answered De Breulh, taking from his pocket an elegant note- case with his crest and monogram upon it and extracting from it three thousand francs. "I will, as is usual, deposit half the price in advance."

Andre blushed scarlet. "You are joking," said he.

"Not at all," answered De Breulh quietly; "I have my own way of doing business, from which I never deviate."

In spite of this answer Andre's pride was hurt.

"But," remarked he, "this picture will not be ready for perhaps six or seven months. I have entered into a contract with a wealthy builder, named Candele, to execute the outside decorations of his house."

"Never mind that," answered M. de Breulh; "take as long as you like."

Of course, after this, Andre could offer no further opposition; he therefore took the money without another word.

"And now," said De Breulh, as he paused for a moment at the open doorway, "let me wish you my good luck, and if you will come and breakfast with me one day, I think I can show you some pictures which you will really appreciate." And handing his card to the artist, he went downstairs.

At first Andre did not glance at the card, but when he did so, the letters seemed to sear his eyeballs like a red-hot iron. For a moment he could hardly breathe, and then a feeling of intense anger took possession of him, for he felt that he had been trifled with and deceived.

Hardly knowing what he was doing, he rushed out on the landing, and, leaning over the banister, called out loudly, "Sir, stop a moment!"

De Breulh, who had by this time reached the bottom of the staircase, turned round.

"Come back, if you please," said Andre.

After a moment's hesitation, De Breulh obeyed; and when he was again in the studio, Andre addressed him in a voice that quivered with indignation.

"Take back these notes, sir; I will not accept them."

"What do you mean?"

"Only that I have thought the matter over, and that I will not accept your commission."

"And why this sudden change?"

"You know perfectly well, M. de Breulh-Faverlay."

The gentleman at once saw that Sabine had mentioned his name to the young artist, and with a slight lacking of generous feeling said,--

"Let me hear your reasons, sir."

"Because, because----" stammered the young man.

"Because is not answer."

Andre's confusion became greater. He would not tell the whole truth, for he would have died sooner than bring Sabine's name into the discussion; and he could only see one way out of his difficulty.

"Suppose I say that I do not like your manner or appearance," returned he disdainfully.

"Is it your wish to insult me, M. Andre?"

"As you choose to take it."

M. de Breulh was not gifted with an immense stock of patience. He turned livid, and made a step forward; but his generous impulses restrained him, and it was in a voice broken by agitation that he said,--

"Accept my apologies, M. Andre; I fear that I have played a part unworthy of you and of myself. I ought to have given you my name at once. I know everything."

"I do not comprehend you," answered Andre in a glacial voice.

"Why doubt, then, if you do not understand? However, I have given you cause to do so. But, let me reassure you, Mademoiselle Sabine has spoken to me with the utmost frankness; and, if you still distrust me, let me tell you that this veiled picture is her portrait. I will say more," continued De Breulh gravely, as the artist still kept silent; "yesterday, at Mademoiselle de Mussidan's request, I withdrew from my position as a suitor for her hand."

Andre had already been touched by De Breulh's frank and open manner, and these last words entirely conquered him.

"I can never thank you enough," began he.

But De Breulh interrupted him.

"A man should not be thanked for performing his duty. I should lie to you if I said that I am not painfully surprised at her communication; but tell me, had you been in my place, would you not have acted in the same manner?"

"I think that I should."

"And now we are friends, are we not?" and again De Breulh held out his hand, which Andre clasped with enthusiasm.

"Yes, yes," faltered he.

"And now," continued De Breulh, with a forced smile, "let us say no more about the picture, which was, after all, merely a pretext. As I came here I said to myself, 'If the man to whom Mademoiselle de Mussidan has given her heart is worthy of her, I will do all I can to advance his suit with her family!' I came here to see what you were like; and now I say to you, do me a great honor, and permit me to place myself, my fortune, and the influence of my friends, at your disposal."

The offer was made in perfect good faith, but Andre shook his head.

"I shall never forget your kindness in making this offer, but----"; he paused for a moment, and then went on: "I will be as open as you have been, and will tell you the whole truth. You may think me foolish; but remember, though I am poor, I have still my self-respect to maintain. I love Sabine, and would give my life for her. Do not be offended at what I am about to say. I would, however, sooner give up her hand than be indebted for it to you."

"But this is mere madness."

"No, sir, it is the purest wisdom; for were I to accede to your wishes, I should feel deeply humiliated by the thought of your self- denial; for I should be madly jealous of the part you were playing. You are of high birth and princely fortune, while I am utterly friendless and unknown; all that I am deficient in you possess."

"But I have been poor myself," interposed De Breulh, "and perhaps endured even greater miseries than ever you have done. Do you know what I was doing at your age? I was slowly starving to death at Sonora, and had to take the humblest position in a cattle ranch. Do you think that those days taught me nothing?"

"You will be able to judge me all the more clearly then," returned Andre. "If I raise myself up to Sabine's level, as she begged me to, then I shall feel that I am your equal; but if I accept your aid, I am your dependent; and I will obey her wishes or perish in the effort."

Up to this moment the passion which stirred Andre's inmost soul had breathed in every word he uttered; but, checking himself by a mighty effort, he resumed in a tone of greater calmness,--

"But I ought to remember how much we already owe you, and I hope that you will allow me to call myself your friend?"

M. de Breulh's noble nature enabled him to understand Andre's scruples; his feelings, however, would not for the instant enable him to speak. He slowly put the notes back in their receptacle, and then said in a low voice,--

"Your conduct is that of an honorable man; and remember this, at all times and seasons you may rely upon De Breulh-Faverlay. Farewell!"

As soon as he was alone, Andre threw himself into an armchair, and mused over this unexpected interview, which had proved a source of such solace to his feelings. All that he now longed for was a letter from Sabine. At this moment the portress entered with a letter. Andre was so occupied with his thoughts that he hardly noticed this act of condescension on the part of the worthy woman.

"A letter!" exclaimed he; and, tearing it open, he glanced at the signature. But Sabine's name was not there; it was signed Modeste. What could Sabine's maid have to say to him? He felt that some great misfortune was impending, and, trembling with excitement, he read the letter.

"SIR,--

"I write to tell you that my mistress has succeeded in the matter she spoke of to you; but I am sorry to say that I have bad news to give you, for she is seriously ill."

"Ill!" exclaimed Andre, crushing up the letter in his hands, and dashing it upon the floor. "Ill! ill!" he repeated, not heeding the presence of the portress; "why, she may be dead;" and, snatching up his hat, he dashed downstairs into the street.

As soon as the portress was left alone, she picked up the letter, smoothed it out, and read it.

"And so," murmured she, "the little lady's name was Sabine--a pretty name; and she is ill, is she? I expect that the old gent who called this morning, and asked so many questions about M. Andre, would give a good deal for this note; but no, that would not be fair."

CHAPTER XX.

A COUNCIL OF WAR.

Mad with his terrible forebodings, Andre hurried through the streets in the direction of the Hotel de Mussidan, caring little for the attention that his excited looks and gestures caused. He had no fixed plan as to what to do when he arrived there, and it was only on reaching the Rue de Matignon that he recovered sufficient coolness to deliberate and reflect.

He had arrived at the desired spot; how should he set to work to obtain the information that he required? The evening was a dark one, and the gas-lamps showed a feeble light through the dull February fog. There were no signs of life in the Rue de Matignon, and the silence was only broken by the continuous surge of carriage wheels in the Faubourg Saint Honore. This gloom, and the inclemency of the weather, added to the young painter's depression. He saw his utter helplessness, and felt that he could not move a step without compromising the woman he so madly adored. He walked to the gate of the house, hoping to gain some information even from the exterior aspect of the house; for it seemed to him that if Sabine were dying, the very stones in the street would utter sounds of woe and lamentation; but the fog had closely enwrapped the house, and he could hardly see which of the windows were lighted. His reasoning faculties told him that there was no use in waiting, but an inner voice warned him to stay. Would Modeste, who had written to him, divine, by some means that he was there, in an agony of suspense, and come out to give him information and solace? All at once a thought darted across his mind, vivid as a flash of lightning.

"M. de Breulh will help me," cried he; "for though I cannot go to the house, he will have no difficulty in doing so."

By good luck, he had M. de Breulh's card in his pocket, and hurried off to his address. M. de Breulh had a fine house in the Avenue de l'Imperatrice, which he had taken more for the commodiousness of the stables than for his own convenience.

"I wish to see M. de Breulh," said Andre, as he stopped breathless at the door, where a couple of footmen were chatting.

The men looked at him with supreme contempt. "He is out," one of them at last condescended to reply.

Andre had by this time recovered his coolness, and taking out De Breulh's card, wrote these words on it in pencil: "One moment's interview. ANDRE."

"Give this to your master as soon as he comes in," said he.

Then he descended the steps slowly. He was certain that M. de Breulh was in the house, and that he would send out after the person who had left the card almost at once. His conclusion proved right; in five minutes he was overtaken by the panting lackey, who, conducting him back to the house, showed him into a magnificently furnished library. De Breulh feared that some terrible event had taken place.

"What has happened?" said he.

"Sabine is dying;" and Andre at once proceeded to inform De Breulh of what had happened since his departure.

"But how can I help you?"

"You can go and make inquiries at the house."

"Reflect; yesterday I wrote to the Count, and broke off a marriage, the preliminaries of which had been completely settled; and within twenty-four hours to send and inquire after his daughter's health would be to be guilty of an act of inexcusable insolence; for it would look as if I fancied that Mademoiselle de Mussidan had been struck down by my rupture of the engagement."

"You are right," murmured Andre dejectedly.

"But," continued De Breulh, after a moment's reflection, "I have a distant relative, a lady who is also a connection of the Mussidan family, the Viscountess de Bois Arden, and she will be glad to be of service to me. She is young and giddy, but as true as steel. Come with me to her; my carriage is ready."

"But, sir," said the Marquis, with a flush upon his face, "but, sir--"

"Pshaw!" broke in Mascarin, "does a mere word frighten you? Who has not done some of it in his time? Why, look at yourself. Do you not recollect this winter that you detected a young man cheating at cards? You said nothing to him at the time, but you found out that he was rich, and, calling upon him the next day, borrowed ten thousand francs. When do you intend to repay that loan?"

Croisenois sank back in his chair, overcome with surprise at this display of knowledge on Mascarin's part. "This is too terrible," muttered he, but Mascarin went on,--

"I know, at least, two thousand persons in Paris who only exist by the exercise of this profession; for I have studied them all, from the convict who screws money out of his former companions, in penal servitude, to the titled villain, who, having discovered the frailty of some unhappy woman, forces her to give him her daughter as his wife. I know a mere messenger in the Rue Douai, who in five years amassed a comfortable fortune. Can you guess how? When he was intrusted with a letter, he invariably opened it, and made himself master of its contents, and if there was a compromising word in it, he pounced down upon either the writer or the person to whom it was addressed. I also know of one large limited company which pays an annual income to a scoundrel with half a dozen foreign orders, who has found out that they have broken their statues of association, and holds proofs of their having done so. But the police are on the alert, and our courts deal very severely with blackmailers."

Mascarin went on: "The English, however, are our masters, for in London a compromising servant is as easily negotiable as a sound bill of exchange. There is in the city a respectable jeweller, who will advance money on any compromising letter with a good name at the foot. His shop is a regular pawnshop of infamy. In the States it has been elevated to the dignity of a profession, and the citizen at New York dreads the blackmailers more than the police, if he is meditating some dishonorable action. Our first operations did not bring in any quick returns, and the harvest promised to be a late one; but you have come upon us just as we are about to reap our harvest. The professions of Hortebise and Catenac--the one a doctor and the other a lawyer-- facilitated our operations greatly. One administered to the diseases of the body, and the other to that of the purse, and, of course, thus they became professors of many secrets. As for me, the head and chief, it would not do to remain an idle looker-on. Our funds had dwindled down a good deal, and, after mature consideration, I decided to hire this house, and open a Servants' Registry Office. Such an occupation would not attract any attention, and in the end it turned out a perfect success, as my friends can testify."

Catenac and Hortebise both nodded assent.

"By the system which I have adopted," resumed Mascarin, "the wealthy and respectable man is as strictly watched in his own house as is the condemned wretch in his cell; for no act of his escapes the eyes of the servants whom we have placed around him. He can hardly even conceal his thoughts from us. Even the very secret that he has murmured to his wife with closed doors reaches our ears."

The Marquis gave a supercilious smile.

"You must have had some inkling of this," observed Mascarin, "for you have never taken a servant from our establishment; but for all that, I am as well posted up in your affairs as yourself. You have even now about you a valet of whom you know nothing."

"Morel was recommended to me by one of my most intimate friends--Sir Richard Wakefield."

"But for all that I have had my suspicions of him; but we will talk of this later, and we will now return to the subject upon which we have met. As I told you, I conceal the immense power I had attained through our agency, and use it as occasion presents itself, and after twenty years' patient labor, I am about to reap a stupendous harvest. The police pay enormous sums to their secret agents, while I, without opening my purse, have an army of devoted adherents. I see perhaps fifty servants of both sexes daily; calculate what this will amount to in a year."

There was an air of complacency about the man as he explained the working of his system, and a ring of triumph in his voice.

"You must not think that all my agents are in my secrets, for the greater part of them are quite unaware of what they are doing, and in this lies my strength. Each of them brings me a slender thread, which I twine into the mighty cord by which I hold my slaves. These unsuspecting agents remind me of those strange Brazilian birds, whose presence is a sure sign that water is to be found near at hand. When one of them utters a note, I dig, and I find. And now, Marquis, do you understand the aim and end of our association?"

"It has," remarked Hortebise quietly, "brought us in some years two hundred and fifty thousand francs apiece."

If M. de Croisenois disliked prosy tales, he by no means underrated the eloquence of figures. He knew quite enough of Paris to understand that if Mascarin threw his net regularly, he would infallibly catch many fish. With this conviction firmly implanted in his mind, he did not require much urging to look with favor on the scheme, and, putting on a gracious smile, he now asked, "And what must I do to deserve admission into this association?"

Paul had listened in wonder and terror, but by degrees all feelings of disgust at the criminality of these men faded away before the power that they unquestionably possessed.

"If," resumed Mascarin, "we have up to this met with no serious obstacles, it is because, though apparently acting rashly, we are in reality most prudent and cautious. We have managed our slaves well, and have not driven any one to desperation. But we are beginning to weary of our profession; we are getting old, and we have need of repose. We intend, therefore, to retire, but before that we wish to have all matters securely settled. I have an immense mass of documentary evidence, but it is not always easy to realize the value they represent, and I wait upon your assistance to enable me to do so."

Croisenois' face fell. Was he to take compromising letters round to his acquaintances and boldly say, "Your purse or your honor?" He had no objection to share the profits of this ignoble trade, but he objected strongly to showing his connection with it openly. "No, no," cried he hastily, "you must not depend upon me."

He seemed so much in earnest that Hortebise and Catenac exchanged glances of dismay.

"Let us have no nonsense," returned Mascarin sternly, "and wait a little before you display so much fierceness. I told you that my documentary evidence was of a peculiar kind. We very often had among our fish married people who cannot deal with their personal property. A husband, for instance, will say, 'I can't take ten thousand francs without my wife, knowing of it.' Women say, 'Why, I get all my money through my husband,' and both are telling the truth. They kneel at my feet and entreat me to have mercy, saying, 'Find me some excuse for using a portion of my funds and you shall have more than you ask.' For a long time I have sought for this means, and at last I have found it in the Limited Company, which you, Marquis, will float next month."

"Really!" returned the Marquis. "I do not see--"

"I beg your pardon; you see it all clearly. A husband who cannot, without fear of disturbing his domestic peace, put in five thousand francs, can put in ten thousand if he tells his wife, 'It is an investment;' and many a wife who has not any money of her own will persuade her husband to bring in the money we require by the proposal to take shares. Now, what do you say to the idea?"

"I think that it is an excellent one, but what part am I to play in it?"

"In taking the part of Chairman of the Company. I could not do so, being merely the proprietor of a Servant's Registry Office. Hortebise, as a doctor, and more than all a homeopath, would inspire no confidence, and Catenac's legal profession prevents him appearing in the matter openly. He will act as our legal adviser."

"But really I do not see anything about me that would induce people to invest," remarked De Croisenois.

"You are too modest; you have your name and rank, which, however we may look upon them, have a great effect upon the general public. There are many Companies who pay directors of rank and credible connection very largely. Before starting this enterprise you can settle all your debts, and the world will then conclude that you are possessed of great wealth, while, at the same time, the news of your approaching marriage with Mademoiselle du Mussidan will be the general talk of society. What better position could you be in?"

"But I have the reputation of being a reckless spendthrift."

"All the better. The day the prospectus comes out with your name at the head of it, there will be a universal burst of laughter. Men will say, 'Do you see what Croisenois is at now? What on earth possessed him to go into Company work?' But as this proceeding on your part will have paid your debts and given you Mademoiselle Sabine's dowry, I think that the laugh will be on your side."

The prospect dazzled Des Croisenois.

"And suppose I accept," asked he, "what will be the end of the farce?"

"Very simple. When all the shares are taken up, you will close the office and let the Company look after itself."

Croisenois started to his feet angrily. "Why," cried he, "you intend to make a catspaw of me! Such a proceeding would send me to penal servitude."

"What an ungrateful man he is!" said Mascarin, appealing to his audience, "when I am doing all I can to prevent his going there."

"Sir!"

But Catenac now felt it time to interfere. "You do not understand," remarked he, addressing Croisenois. "You will start a Company for the development of some native product, let us say Pyrenean marble, for instance, issue a prospectus, and the shares will be at once taken up by Mascarin's clients."

"Well, what happens then?"

"Why, out of the funds thus obtained we will take care when the crash comes to reimburse any outsiders who may have taken shares in the concern, telling them that the thing has been a failure, and that we are ruined; while Mascarin will take care to obtain from all his clients a discharge in full, so the Company will quietly collapse."

"But," objected the Marquis, "all the shareholders will know that I am a rogue."

"Naturally."

"They would hold me in utter contempt."

"Perhaps so, but they would never venture to let you see it. I never thought that you would make objections; and whose character, however deep, will bear investigation?"

"Are you sure that you hold your people securely?" asked he; "and that none of them will turn surly?"

Mascarin was waiting for this question, and taking from his desk the pieces of cardboard which he took so much pains to arrange, he replied, "I have here the names of three hundred and fifty people who will each invest ten thousand francs in the Company. Listen to me, and judge for yourself."

He put all three pieces of cardboard together, and then drawing out one he read,--

" 'N---, civil engineer. Five letters written by him to the gentleman who procured his appointment for him: worth fifteen thousand francs.'

" 'P---, merchant. Absolute proof that his last bankruptcy was a fraudulent one, and that he kept back from his creditors two hundred thousand francs. Good for twenty thousand francs.'

" 'Madame V---. A photograph taken in very light and airy costume. Poor, but can pay three thousand francs.'

" 'M. H---. Three letters from her mother, proving that the daughter had compromised herself before marriage. Letter from a monthly nurse appended. Can be made to pay ten thousand francs.'

" 'X---, a portion of his correspondence with L--- in 1848. Three thousand francs.'

" 'Madame M. de M---. A true history of her adventure with M. J---.' "

This sample was quite sufficient to satisfy M. de Croisenois. "Enough," cried he, "I yield. I bow before your gigantic power, which utterly surpasses that of the police. Give me your orders."

Before this Mascarin had conquered Hortebise and Paul Violaine, and now he had the Marquis at his feet. Many times during this conversation the Marquis had more than once endeavored to make up his mind to withdraw entirely from the business, but he had been unable to resist the strange fascination of that mysterious person who had been laying bare his scheme with such extraordinary audacity. The few vestiges of honesty that were still left in his corrupted soul revolted at the thought of the shameful compact into which he was about to enter, but the dazzling prospect held out before his eyes silenced his scruples, and he felt a certain pride in being the associate of men who possessed such seemingly illimitable power. Mascarin saw that there was no longer any necessity for the extreme firmness with which he had before spoken, and it was with the most studied courtesy that he replied: "I have no orders to give you, Marquis, our interests are identical, and we must all have a voice in the deliberations as to the best means of carrying them out."

This change from /hauteur/ to suavity gratified Croisenois' pride immensely.

"Now," continued Mascarin, "let us speak of your own circumstances. You wrote to me recently that you had nothing, and I am aware that you have no expectations for the future."

"Excuse me, but there is the fortune of my poor brother George, who disappeared so mysteriously."

"Let me assure you," answered Mascarin, "that we had better be perfectly frank with each other."

"And am I not so?" answered the Marquis.

"Why, in talking of this imaginary fortune?"

"It is not imaginary; it is real, and a very large one, too, about twelve or fourteen hundred thousand francs, and I can obtain it, for, by Articles 127 and 129 of the Code Napoleon---"

He interrupted himself, as he saw an expression of hardly-restrained laughter upon the features of Dr. Hortebise.

"Do not talk nonsense," answered Mascarin. "You could at first have filed an affidavit regarding your brother's disappearance, and applied to the Court to appoint you trustee, but this is now exactly what you wish to avoid."

"Why not, pray? Do you think----"

"Pooh, pooh, but you have raised so much money on this inheritance that there is nothing of it left hardly, certainly not sufficient to pay your debts. It is the bait you used to allure your tradespeople into giving you credit."

At finding himself so easily fathomed, Croisenois burst into a peel of laughter. Mascarin had by this time thrown himself into an armchair, as though utterly worn out by fatigue.

"There is no necessity, Marquis," said he, "to detain you here longer. We shall meet again shortly, and settle matters. Meanwhile Catenac will draw up the prospectus and Articles of Association of the proposed Company, and post you up in the financial slang of which you must occasionally make use."

The Marquis and the lawyer at once rose and took their leave. As soon as the door had closed behind them, Mascarin seemed to recover his energy.

"Well, Paul," said he, "what do you think of all this?"

Like all men with weak and ductile natures, Paul, after being almost prostrated by the first discovery of his master's villainy, had now succeeded in smothering the dictates of his conscience, and adopted a cynical tone quite worthy of his companions.

"I see," said he, "that you have need of me. Well, I am not a Marquis, but you will find me quite as trustworthy and obedient."

Paul's reply did not seem to surprise Mascarin, but it is doubtful whether he was pleased by it, for his countenance showed traces of a struggle between extreme satisfaction and intense annoyance, while the doctor was surprised at the cool audacity of the young man whose mind he had undertaken to form.

Paul was a little disturbed by the long and continued silence of his patron, and at last he ventured to say timidly,--

"Well, sir, I am anxious to know under what conditions I am to be shown the way to make my fortune and marry Mademoiselle Flavia Rigal, whom I love."

Mascarin gave a diabolical smile.

"Whose dowry you love," he observed. "Let us speak plainly."

"Pardon me, sir, I said just what I meant."

The doctor, who had not Mascarin's reasons for gravity, now burst into a jovial laugh.

"And that pretty Rose," said he, "what of her?"

"Rose is a creature of the past," answered Paul. "I can now see what an idiot I was, and I have entirely effaced her from my memory, and I am half inclined to deplore that Mademoiselle Rigal is an heiress, the more so if it is to form a barrier between us."

This declaration seemed to make Mascarin more easy.

"Reassure yourself, my boy," said he, "we will remove that barrier; but I will not conceal from you that the part you have to play is much more difficult than that assigned to the Marquis de Croisenois; but if it is harder and more perilous, the reward will be proportionately greater."

He was turning away, and looking for his hat, proposed to beat a retreat; but Dr. Hortebise stood between him and the door, gazing upon him with no friendly expression of countenance. Catenac was not a man to be easily alarmed, but the doctor's appearance was so threatening, and the smile upon Mascarin's lips was of so deadly a character, that he stood still, positively frightened into immobility.

"What do you mean?" stammered he; "what is it you say now?"

"First," replied the doctor, speaking slowly and distinctly,--"first, we wish that you should listen to us when we speak to you."

"I am listening."

"Then sit down again, and hear what Baptiste has to say."

The command Catenac had over his countenance was so great that it was impossible to see to what conclusion he had arrived from the words and manner of his confederates.

"Then let Baptiste explain himself," said he.

"Before entering into matters completely," said he coolly, "I first want to ask our dear friend and associate if he is prepared to act with us?"

"Why should there be any doubt on that point?" asked the lawyer. "Do all my repeated assurances count as nothing?"

"We do not want promises now; what we do want is good faith and real co-operation."

"Can it be that you--"

"I ought to inform you," continued Mascarin, unheeding the interruption, "that we have every prospect of success; and, if we carry the matter through, we shall certainly have a million apiece."

Hortebise had not the calm patience of his confederate, and exclaimed,--

"You understand it well enough. Say Yes or No."

Catenac was in the agonies of indecision, and for fully a minute made no reply.

"/No/, then!" he broke out in a manner which betrayed his intense agitation. "After due consideration, and having carefully weighed the chances for and against, I answer you decidedly, No."

Mascarin and Hortebise evidently expected this reply, and exchanged glances.

"Permit me to explain," said Catenac, "what you consider as a cowardly withdrawal upon my part--"

"Call it treachery."

"I will not quibble about words. I wish to be perfectly straightforward with you."

"I am glad to hear it," sneered the doctor, "though that is not your usual form."

"And yet I do not think that I have ever concealed my real opinion from you. It is fully ten years ago since I spoke to you of the necessity of breaking up this association. Can you recall what I said? I said only our extreme need and griping poverty justified our acts. They are now inexcusable."

"You talked very freely of your scruples," observed Mascarin.

"You remember my words then?"

"Yes, and I remember too that those inner scruples never hindered you from drawing your share of the profits."

"That is to say," burst in the doctor, "you repudiated the work, but shared the booty. You wished to play the game without staking anything."

Catenac was in no way disconcerted at this trenchant argument.

"Quite true," said he, "I always received my share; but I have done quite as much as you in putting the agency in its present prosperous condition. Does it not work smoothly like a perfect piece of mechanism? Have we not succeeded in nearly all our schemes? The income comes in monthly with extreme regularity, and I, according to my rights, have received one-third. If you desire to throw up this perilous means of livelihood, say so, and I will not oppose it."

"You are really too good," sneered the doctor, with a look of menace in his glance.

"Nor," continued Catenac, "will I oppose you if you prefer to let matters stand as they are; but if you start on fresh enterprises, and embark on the tempestuous sea of danger, then I put down my foot and very boldly 'halt.' I will not take another step with you. I can see by the looks of both of you that you think me a fool and a coward. Heaven grant that the future may not show you only too plainly that I have been in the right. Think over this. For twenty years fortune has favored us, but, believe me, it is never wise to tempt her too far, for it is well known that at some time or other she always turns."

"Your imagery is really charming," remarked Hortebise sarcastically.

"Good, I have nothing else to say but to repeat my warning: /reflect/. Grand as your hopes and expectations may be, they are as nothing to the perils that you will encounter."

This cold flood of eloquence was more than the doctor could bear.

"It is all very well for you," exclaimed he, "to reason like this, for you are a rich man."

"I have enough to live on, I allow; for in addition to the income derived from my profession, I have saved two hundred thousand francs; and if you can be induced to renounce your projects, I will divide this sum with you. You have only to think."

Mascarin, who had taken no part in the dispute, now judged it time to interfere.

"And so," said he, turning to Catenac, "you have only two hundred thousand francs?"

"That or thereabouts."

"And you offer to divide this sum with us. Really we ought to be deeply grateful to you, but----"

Mascarin paused for a moment; then settling his spectacles more firmly, he went on,--

"But even if you were to give us what you propose, you would still have eleven hundred francs remaining!"

Catenac burst into a pleasant laugh. "You are jesting," said he.

"I can prove the correctness of my assertion;" and as he spoke, Mascarin unlocked a drawer, and taking a small notebook from it, turned over the pages, and leaving it open at a certain place, handed it to the lawyer.

"There," said he, "that is made up to December last, and shows precisely how you stand financially. Twice, then, you have increased your funds. These deposits you will find in an addenda at the end of the book."

Catenac started to his feet; all his calmness had now disappeared.

"Yes," he said, "I have just the sum you name; and I, for that very reason, refuse to have anything further to do with your schemes. I have an income of sixty thousand francs; that is to say, sixty thousand good reasons for receiving no further risks. You envy me my good fortune, but did we not all start penniless? I have taken care of my money, while you have squandered yours. Hortebise has lost his patients, while I have increased the number of my clients; and now you want me to tread the dangerous road again. Not I; go your way, and leave me to go home."

Again he took up his hat, but a wave of the hand from Mascarin detained him.

"Suppose," said he coldly, "that I told you that your assistance was necessary to me."

"I should say so much the worse for you."

"But suppose I insist?"

"And how can you insist? We are both in the same boat, and sink or swim together."

"Are you certain of that?"

"So certain that I repeat from this day I wash my hands of you."

"I am afraid you are in error."

"How so?"

"Because for twelve months past; I have given food and shelter to a girl of the name of Clarisse. Do you by any chance know her?"

At the mention of this name, the lawyer started, as a man starts who, walking peacefully along, suddenly sees a deadly serpent coiled across his path.

"Clarisse," stammered he, "how did you know of her? who told you?"

But the sarcastic sneer upon the lips of his two confederates wounded his pride so deeply, that in an instant he recovered his self- possession.

"I am getting foolish," said he, "to ask these men how they learned my secret. Do they not always work by infamous and underhand means?"

"You see I know all," remarked Mascarin, "for I foresaw the day would come when you would wish to sever our connection, and even give us up to justice, if you could do so with safety to yourself. I therefore took my precautions. One thing, however, I was not prepared for, and that was, that a man of your intelligence should have played so paltry a game, and even twelve months back thought of betraying us. It is almost incredible. Do you ever read the /Gazette des Tribunaux/? I saw in its pages yesterday a story nearly similar to your own. Shall I tell it to you? A lawyer who concealed his vices beneath a mantle of joviality and candor, brought up from the country a pretty, innocent girl to act as servant in his house. This lawyer occupied his leisure time in leading the poor child astray, and the moment at last came when the consequences of her weakness were too apparent. The lawyer was half beside himself at the approaching scandal. What would the neighbors say? Well, to cut the story short, the infant was suppressed,--you understand, suppressed, and the mother turned into the street."

"Baptiste, have mercy!"

"It was a most imprudent act, for such things always leak out somehow. You have a gardener at your house at Champigny, and suppose the idea seized upon this worthy man to dig up the ground round the wall at the end of the garden."

"That is enough," said Catenac, piteously. "I give in."

Mascarin adjusted his spectacles, as he always did in important moments.

"You give in, do you? Not a bit. Even now you are endeavoring to find a means of parrying my home thrusts."

"But I declare to you----"

"Do not be alarmed; dig as deeply as he might, your gardener would discover nothing."

The lawyer uttered a stifled exclamation of rage as he perceived the pit into which he had fallen.

"He would find nothing," resumed Mascarin, "and yet the story is all true. Last January, on a bitterly cold night, you dug a hole, and in it deposited the body of a new-born infant wrapped in a shawl. And what shawl? Why the very one that you purchased at the /Bon Marche/, when you were making yourself agreeable to Clarisse. The shopman who sold it to you has identified it, and is ready to give evidence when called upon. You may look for that shawl, Catenac, but you will not find it."

"Have you got that shawl?" asked Catenac hoarsely.

"Am I a fool?" asked Mascarin contemptuously. "Tantaine has it; but /I/ know where the body is, and will keep the information to myself. Do not be alarmed; act fairly, and you are safe; but make one treacherous move, and you will read in the next day's papers a paragraph something to this effect: 'Yesterday some workmen, engaged in excavations near so-and-so, discovered the body of a new-born infant. Every effort is being made to discover the author of the crime.' You know me, and that I work promptly. To the shawl I have added a handkerchief and a few other articles belonging to Clarisse, which will render it an easy matter to fix the guilt on you."

Catenac was absolutely stunned, and had lost all power of defending himself. The few incoherent words that he uttered showed his state of utter despair.

"You have killed me," gasped he, "just as the prize, that I have been looking for for twenty yeas, was in my grasp."

"Work does a man no harm," remarked the doctor sententiously.

There was, however, little time to lose; the Marquis de Croisenois and Paul might be expected to arrive at any moment, and Mascarin hastened to restore a certain amount of calmness to his prostrate antagonist.

"You make as much noise as if we were going to hand you over to the executioner on the spot. Do you think that we are such a pair of fools as to risk all these hazards without some almost certain chance of success? Hortebise was as much startled as yourself when I first spoke to him of this affair, but I explained everything fully to him, and now he is quite enthusiastic in the matter. Of course you can lay aside all fear, and, as a man of the world, will bear no malice against those who have simply played a better game than yourself."

"Go on," said Catenac, forcing a smile, "I am listening."

Mascarin made a short pause.

"What we want of you," answered he, "will not compromise you in the slightest degree. I wish you to draw up a document, the particulars of which I will give you presently, and you will outwardly have no connection with the matter."

"Very good."

"But there is more yet. The Duke of Champdoce has placed a difficult task in your hands. You are engaged in a secret on his behalf."

"You know that also?"

"I know everything that may be made subservient to our ends. I also know that instead of coming direct to me you went to the very man that we have every reason to dread, that fellow Perpignan, who is nearly as sharp as we are."

"Go on," returned Catenac impatiently. "What do you expect from me on this point?"

"Not much; you must only come to me first, and report any discovery you may have made, and never give any information to the Duke without first consulting us."

"I agree."

The contending parties seemed to have arrived at an amicable termination, and Dr. Hortebise smiled complacently.

"Now," said he, "shall we not confess, after all, that there was no use in making such a fuss?"

"I allow that I was in the wrong," answered Catenac meekly; and, extending his hands to his two associates with an oily smile, he said: "Let us forget and forgive."

Was he to be trusted? Mascarin and the doctor exchanged glances of suspicion. A moment afterward a knock came to the door, and Paul entered, making a timid bow to his two patrons.

"My dear boy," said Mascarin, "let me present you to one of my oldest and best friends." Then, turning to Catenac, he added: "I wish to ask you to help and assist my young friend here. Paul Violaine is a good fellow, who has neither father nor mother, and whom we are trying to help on in his journey through life."

The lawyer started as he caught the strange, meaning smile which accompanied these words.

"Great heavens!" said he, "why did you not speak sooner?"

Catenac at once divined Mascarin's project, and understood the allusion to the Duke de Champdoce.

CHAPTER XVII.

SOME SCRAPS OF PAPER.

The Marquis de Croisenois was never punctual. He had received a note asking him to call on Mascarin at eleven o'clock, and twelve had struck some time before he made his appearance. Faultlessly gloved, his glass firmly fixed in his eye, and a light walking cane in his hand, and with that air of half-veiled insolence that is sometimes affected by certain persons who wish the world to believe that they are of great importance, the Marquis de Croisenois entered the room.

At the age of twenty-five Henry de Croisenois affected the airs and manners of a lad of twenty, and so found many who looked upon his escapades with lenient eyes, ascribing them to the follies of youth. Under this youthful mask, however he concealed a most astute and cunning intellect, and had more than once got the better of the women with whom he had had dealings. His fortune was terribly involved, because he had insisted on living at the same rate as men who had ten times his income. Forming one of the recklessly extravagant band of which the Duke de Saumeine was the head, Croisenois, too, kept his racehorses, which was certainly the quickest way to wreck the most princely fortune. The Marquis had found out this, and was utterly involved, when Mascarin extended a helping hand to him, to which he clung with all the energy of a drowning man.

Whatever Henry de Croisenois' anxieties may have been on the day in question, he did not allow a symptom of them to appear, and on his entrance negligently drawled, "I have kept you waiting, I fear; but really my time is not my own. I am quite at your service now, and will wait until these gentlemen have finished their business with you." And as he concluded, he again placed the cigar which he had removed while saying these words, to his lips.

His manner was very insolent, and yet the amiable Mascarin did not seem offended, although he loathed the scent of tobacco.

"We had begun to despair of seeing you, Marquis," answered he politely. "I say so, because these gentlemen are here to meet you. Permit me to introduce to you, Dr. Hortebise, M. Catenac of the Parisian bar, and our secretary," pointing as he spoke, to Paul.

As soon as Croisenois had taken his seat, Mascarin went straight to the point, as a bullet to the target. "I do not intend," began he, "to leave you in doubt for a moment. Beatings about the bush would be absurd among persons like ourselves."

At finding himself thus classed with the other persons present, the Marquis gave a little start, and then drawled out, "You flatter me, really."

"I may tell you, Marquis," resumed Mascarin, "that your marriage has been definitely arranged by myself and my associates. All you have to do is to get the young lady's consent; for that of the Count and Countess has already been secured."

"There will be no difficulty in that," lisped the Marquis. "I will promise her the best horsed carriage in the Bois, a box at the opera, unlimited credit at Van Klopen's, and perfect freedom. There will be no difficulty, I assure you. Of course, however, I must be presented by some one who holds a good position in society."

"Would the Viscountess de Bois Arden suit you?"

"No one better; she is a relation of the Count de Mussidan."

"Good; then when you wish, Madame de Bois Arden will introduce you as a suitor for the young lady's hand, and praise you up to the skies."

The Marquis looked very jubilant at hearing this. "All right," cried he; "then that decides the matter."

Paul wondered whether he was awake or dreaming. He too had been promised a rich wife, and here was another man who was being provided for in the same manner. "These people," muttered he, "seem to keep a matrimonial agency as well as a servants' registry office!"

"All that is left, then," said the Marquis, "is to arrange the--shall I call it the commission?"

"I was about to come to that," returned Mascarin.

"Well, I will give you a fourth of the dowry, and on the day of my marriage will hand you a cheque for that amount."

Paul now imagined that he saw how matters worked. "If I marry Flavia," thought he, "I shall have to share her dowry with these highly respectable gentlemen."

The offer made by the Marquis did not, however, seem to please Mascarin. "That is not what we want," said he.

"No,--well, must I give you more? Say how much."

Mascarin shook his head.

"Well then, I will give you a third; it is not worth while to give you more."

"No, no; I would not take half, nor even the whole of the dowry. You may keep that as well as what you owe us."

"Well, but tell me what you /do/ want."

"I will do so," answered Mascarin, adjusting his spectacles carefully; "but before doing so, I feel that I must give you a short account of the rise and progress of this association."

At this statement Hortebise and Catenac sprang to their feet in surprise and terror. "Are you mad?" said they at length, with one voice.

Mascarin shrugged his shoulders.

"Not yet," answered he gently, "and I beg that you will permit me to go on."

"But surely we have some voice in the matter," faltered Catenac.

"That is enough," exclaimed Mascarin angrily, "Am not I the head of this association? Do you think," he continued in tones of deep sarcasm, "that we cannot speak openly before the Marquis?"

Hortebise and the lawyer resignedly resumed their seats. Croisenois thought that a word from him might reassure them.

"Among honest men--" began he.

"We are not honest men," interrupted Mascarin. "Sir," added he in a severe tone, "nor are you either."

This plain speaking brought a bright flush to the face of the Marquis, who had half a mind to be angry, but policy restrained him, and he affected to look on the matter as a joke. "Your joke is a little personal," said he.

But Mascarin took no heed of his remark. "Listen to me," said he, "for we have no time to waste, and do you," he added, turning to Paul, "pay the greatest attention."

A moment of perfect silence ensued, broken only by the hum of voices in the outer office.

"Marquis," said Mascarin, whose whole face blazed with a gleam of conscious power, "twenty-five years ago I and my associates were young and in a very different position. We were honest then, and all the illusions of youth were in full force; we had faith and hope. We all then tenanted a wretched garret in the Rue de la Harpe, and loved each other like brothers."

"That was long, long ago," murmured Hortebise.

"Yes," rejoined Mascarin; "and yet the effluxion of times does not hinder me from seeing things as they then were, and my heart aches as I compare the hopes of those days with the realities of the present. Then, Marquis, we were poor, miserably poor, and yet we all had vague hopes of future greatness."

Croisenois endeavored to conceal a sneer; the story was not a very interesting one.

"As I said before, each one of us anticipated a brilliant career. Catenac had gained a prize by his 'Treatise on the Transfer of Real Estate,' and Hortebise had written a pamphlet regarding which the great Orfila had testified approval. Nor was I without my successes. Hortebise had unluckily quarrelled with his family. Catenac's relatives were poor, and I, well, I had no family. I stood alone. We were literally starving, and I was the only one earning money. I prepared pupils for the military colleges, but as I only earned twenty-five sous a day by cramming a dull boy's brain with algebra and geometry, that was not enough to feed us all. Well, to cut a long story short, the day came when we had not a coin among us. I forgot to tell you that I was devotedly attached to a young girl who was dying of consumption, and who had neither food nor fuel. What could I do? I knew not. Half mad, I rushed from the house, asking myself if I had better plead for charity or take the money I required by force from the first passer-by. I wandered along the quays, half inclined to confide my sorrow to the Seine, when suddenly I remembered it was a holiday at the Polytechnic School, and that if I went to the /Café Semblon/ or the Palais Royal, I should most likely meet with some of my old pupils, who could perhaps lend me a few sous. Five francs perhaps, Marquis,--that is a very small sum, but in that day it meant the life of my dear Marie and of my two friends. Have you ever been hungry, M. de Croisenois?"

De Croisenois started; he had never suffered from hunger, but how could he tell what the future might bring? for his resources were so nearly exhausted, that even to-morrow he might be compelled to discard his fictitious splendor and sink into the abyss of poverty.

"When I reached the /Café Semblon/," continued Mascarin, "I could not see a single pupil, and the waiter to whom I addressed my inquiries looked at me with the utmost contempt, for my clothes were in tatters; but at length he condescended to inform me that the young gentlemen had been and gone, but that they would return. I said that I would wait for them. The man asked me if I would take anything, and when I replied in the negative, contemptuously pointed to a chair in a distant corner, where I patiently took my seat. I had sat for some time, when suddenly a young man entered the /café/, whose face, were I to live for a century, I shall never forget. He was perfectly livid, his features rigid, and his eyes wild and full of anguish. He was evidently in intense agony of mind or body. Evidently, however, it was not poverty that was oppressing him, for as he cast himself upon a sofa, all the waiters rushed forward to receive his orders. In a voice that was almost unintelligible, he asked for a bottle of brandy, and pen, ink, and paper. In some mysterious manner, the sight of this suffering brought balm to my aching heart. The order of the young man was soon executed, and pouring out a tumbler of brandy, he took a deep draught. The effect was instantaneous, he turned crimson, and for a moment almost fell back insensible. I kept my eyes on him, for a voice within me kept crying out that there was some mysterious link connecting this man and myself, and that his life was in some manner interwoven with mine, and that the influence he would exercise over me would be for evil. So strongly did this idea become rooted, that I should have left the /café/, had not my curiosity been so great. In the meantime the stranger had recovered himself, and seizing a pen, scrawled a few lines on a sheet of paper. Evidently he was not satisfied with his composition, for after reading it over, he lit a match and burnt the paper. He drank more brandy, and wrote a second letter, which, too, proved a failure, for he tore it to fragments, which he thrust into his waistcoat pocket. Again he commenced, using greater care. It was plain that he had forgotten where he was, for he gesticulated, uttered a broken sentence or two and evidently believed that he was in his own house. His last letter seemed to satisfy him, and he recopied it with care. He closed and directed it; then, tearing the original into pieces, he flung it under the table; then calling the waiter, he said, 'Here are twenty francs; take this letter to the address on the envelope. Bring the answer to my house; here is my card.' The man ran out of the room, and the nobleman, only waiting to pay his bill, followed almost immediately. The morsels of white paper beneath the table had a strange fascination for me; I longed to gather them up, to put them together, and to learn the secret of the strange drama that had been acted before me. But, as I have told you, then I was honest and virtuous, and the meanness of such an act revolted all my instincts; and I should have overcome this temptation, had it not been for one of those trifling incidents which too often form the turning-point of a life. A draught from a suddenly opened door caught one of these morsels of paper, and wafted it to my feet. I stooped and picked it up, and read on it the ominous words, 'blow out my brains!' I had not been mistaken, then, and was face to face with some coming tragedy. Having once yielded, I made no further efforts at self- control. The waiters were running about; no one paid any attention to me; and creeping to the place that the unknown had occupied, I obtained possession of two more scraps of paper. Upon one I read, 'shame and horror!' upon the other, 'one hundred thousand francs by to-night.' The meaning of these few words were as clear as daylight to me; but for all that, I managed to collect every atom of the torn paper, and piecing them together, read this:--

" 'CHARLES,-- 'I must have one hundred thousand francs to-night, and you are the only one to whom I can apply. The shame and horror of my position are too much for me. Can you send it me in two hours? As you act, so I regulate my conduct. I am either saved, or I blow out my brains.'

"You are probably surprised, Marquis, at the accuracy of my memory, and even now I can see this scrawl as distinctly as if it were before me. At the end of this scrawl was a signature, one of the best known commercial names, which, in common with other financial houses, was struggling against a panic on the Bourse. My discovery disturbed me very much. I forgot all my miseries, and thought only of his. Were not our positions entirely similar? But by degrees a hideous temptation began to creep into my heart, and, as the minutes passed by, assume more vivid color and more tangible reality. Why should I not profit by this stolen secret? I went to the desk and asked for some wafers and a Directory. Then, returning, I fastened the torn fragments upon a clean sheet of paper, discovered the address of the writer, and then left the /café/. The house was situated in the Rue Chaussee d'Autin. For fully half an hour I paced up and down before his magnificent dwelling-place. Was he alive? Had the reply of Charles been in the affirmative? I decided at last to venture, and rang the bell. A liveried domestic appeared at my summons, and said that his master did not receive visitors at that hour; besides, he was at dinner. I was exasperated at the man's insolence, and replied hotly, 'If you want to save your master from a terrible misfortune, go and tell him that a man has brought him the rough draft of the letter he wrote a little time back at the /Café Semblon/.' The man obeyed me without a word, no doubt impressed by the earnestness of my manner. My message must have caused intense consternation, for in a moment the footman reappeared, and, in an obsequious manner, said, 'Follow at once, sir; my master is waiting for you.' He led me into a large room, magnificently furnished as a library, and in the centre of this room stood the man of the /Café Semblon/. His face was deadly pale, and his eyes blazed with fury. I was so agitated that I could hardly speak.

" 'You have picked up the scraps of paper I threw away?' exclaimed he.

"I nodded, and showed him the fragments fastened on to the sheet of note-paper.

" 'How much do you want for that?' asked he. 'I will give you a thousand francs.'

"I declare to you, gentlemen, that up to this time I had no intention of making money by the secret. My intention in going had been simply to say, 'I bring you this paper, of which some one else might have taken an undue advantage. I have done you a service; lend me a hundred francs.' This is what I meant to say, but his behavior irritated me, and I answered,--

" 'No, I want two thousand francs.'

"He opened a drawer, drew out a bundle of banknotes, and threw them in my face.

" 'Pay yourself, you villain!' said he.

"I can, I fear, never make you understand what I felt at this undeserved insult. I was not myself, and Heaven knows that I was not responsible for any crime that I might have committed in the frenzy of the moment, and I was nearly doing so. That man will, perhaps, never see death so near him, save at his last hour. On his writing table lay one of those Catalan daggers, which he evidently used as a paper- cutter. I snatched it up, and was about to strike, when the recollection of Marie dying of cold and starvation occurred to me. I dashed the knife to the ground, and rushed from the house in a state bordering on insanity. I went into that house an honest man, and left it a degraded scoundrel. But I must finish. When I reached the street, the two banknotes which I had taken from the packet seemed to burn me like coals of fire. I hastened to a money-changer, and got coin for them. I think, from my demeanor, he must have thought that I was insane. With my plunder weighing me down, I regained our wretched garret in the Rue de la Harpe. Catenac and Hortebise were waiting for me with the utmost anxiety. You remember that day, my friends. Marquis, my story is especially intended for you. As soon as I entered the room, my friends ran up to me, delighted at seeing me return in safety, but I thrust them aside.

" 'Let me alone!' cried I; 'I am no longer fit to take an honest man's hand; but we have money, money!' And I threw the bags upon the table. One of them burst, and a flood of silver coins rolled to every part of the room.

"Marie started from her chair with upraised hands. 'Money!' she repeated, 'money! we shall have food, and I won't die.'

"My friends, Marquis, were not as they are now, and they started back in horror, fearing that I had committed some crime.

" 'No,' said I, 'I have committed no crime, not one, at least, that will bring me within the reach of the strong arm of the law. This money is the price of our honor, but no one will know that fact but ourselves.'

"Marquis, there was no sleeping in the garret all that night; but when daylight peered through the broken windows, it beamed on a table covered with empty bottles, and round it were seated three men, who, having cast aside all honorable scruples, had sworn that they would arrive at wealth and prosperity by any means, no matter how foul and treacherous they might be. That is all."

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN INFAMOUS TRADE.

Mascarin, who was anxious to make as deep an impression as possible upon Croisenois and Paul, broke off his story abruptly, and paced up and down the room. Had his intention been to startle his audience, he had most certainly succeeded. Paul was breathless with interest, and Croisenois broke down in attempting to make one of his usual trivial remarks. He was not particularly intelligent, except as regarded his self-interests, and though, of course, he knew that there must be some connection between his interests and the recital that Mascarin had just made, he could not for the life of him make out what it was. Mascarin seemed utterly careless of the effect that he had produced. But the next time that his walk brought him to his desk he stopped, and, adjusting his glasses, said, "I trust, Marquis, that you will forgive this long preliminary address, which would really make a good sensational novel; but we have now arrived at the really practical part of the business." As he said these words, he took up an imposing attitude, with his elbow resting on the mantelpiece.

"On the night of which I have spoken, I and my friends released ourselves from all the bonds of virtue and honor, and freed ourselves from all the fetters of duty to our fellow-men. The plan emanated from my brain complete in all its details in the will I made twenty years ago to my friends. Marquis, as the summer goes on, you know that the ripest and reddest cherries are the fullest flavored, just so, in the noblest and wealthiest of families in Paris there is not one that has not some terrible and ghostly secret which is sedulously concealed. Now, suppose that one man should gain possession of all of them, would he not be sole and absolute master? Would he not be more powerful than a despot on his throne? Would he not be able to sway society in any manner he might think fit? Well, I said to myself, I will be that man!"

Ever since the Marquis had been in relation with Mascarin, he had shrewdly suspected that his business was not conducted on really fair principles.

Another statue which belongs, so far as artistic reasoning may carry us, to the period and school of Praxiteles, is the so- called Venus of Milo. The proper title to be given to this statue is doubtful, for the drapery corresponds to that of the Roman type of Victory, and if we could be sure that the goddess once held the shield of conquest in her now broken arms we should be forced to call the figure a Victory and place its date no earlier than the second century B.C. However this may be, the statue is justly one of the most famous in the world. It represents an ideal of purity and sweetness. There is not a trace of coarseness or immodesty in the half-naked woman who stands perfect in the maidenly dignity of her own conquering fairness. Her serious yet smiling face, her graceful form, the delicacy of feeling in attitude and gaze, the tender moulding of breast and limbs, make it a worthy companion of the Hermes or Praxiteles. It seems scarcely possible that it should not have sprung from the inspiration of his example.

The last of the great sculptors of Greece was Lysippos of Sikyou. He differed from Pheidias on the one hand and from Polycleitos on the other. Pheidias strove to make his gods all god-like; Lysippos was content to represent them merely as exaggerated human beings; but therein he differed also from Polycleitos, who aimed to model the human body with the beauty only which actually existed in it. Lysippos felt that he must set the standard of human perfection higher than it appears in the average of human examples. Hence we have from him the statues of Heracles, in which the ideal of manly strength was carried far beyond the range of human possibility. A reminiscence of this conception of Lysippos may be found in the Farnese Heracles of Glycon, now in the Museum of Naples. Lysippos also sculptured four statues of Zeus, which depended for their interest largely on their heroic size.

Lysippos won much fame by his statues of Alexander the Great, but he is chiefly known to us by his statue of the athlete scraping himself with a strigil, of which an authentic copy is in the Vatican. The figure differs decidedly from the thick-set, rather heavy figures of Polycleitos, being tall, and slender in spite of its robustness. The head is small, the torso is small at the waist, but strong, and the whole body is splendidly active.

The changes in the models of earlier sculptors made by Lysippos were of sufficient importance to give rise to a school which was carried on by his sons and others, producing among many famous works the Barberini Faun, now at the Glyptothek, Munich. The enormous Colossus of Rhodes was also the work of a disciple of Lysippos.

But from this time the downward tendency in Greek art is only too apparent, and very rapid. The spread of Greek influence over Asia, and later, in consequence of the conquest of Greece by Rome, over Europe, had the effect of widening the market for Greek production, but of drying up the sources of what was vital in that production. Athens and Sikyou became mere provincial cities, and were shorn thenceforth of all artistic significance; and Greek art, thus deprived of the roots of its life, continued to grow for a while with a rank luxuriance of production, but soon became normal and conventional. The artists who followed Lysippos contented themselves chiefly with seeking a merely technical perfection in reproducing the creations of the earlier and more original age.

At Pergamon under Attalus, in the last years of the third century, there was something of an artistic revival. This Attalus successfully defended his country against an overwhelming attack of the Gauls from the north. To celebrate this victory, an altar was erected to Zeus on the Acropolis of Pergamon, of which the frieze represented the contest between Zeus and the giants. These sculptures are now to be found in Berlin. They are carved in high relief; the giants with muscles strained and distended, their bodies writhing in the contortions of effort and suffering; the gods, no longer calm and restrained, but themselves overcome with the ardor of battle. Zeus stretches his arms over the battle-field hurling destruction everywhere. Athene turns from the field, dragging at her heels a young giant whom she has conquered, and reaches forward to the crown of victory. The wild, passionate action of the whole work remove it far from the firm, orderly work of Pheidias, and carry it almost to the extreme of pathetic representation in sculpture shown by the Laocoon.

The contests with the Gauls, the fear inspired by the huge forms of the barbarians, seem to have influenced powerfully the imaginative conceptions of the sculptors of the school of Pergamon. One of the most famous works which they have left is the figure long known as the Dying Gladiator, of which a copy exists in the Capitoline Museum. This represents a Gaul sinking wounded to the ground, supporting himself on his right arm. It is remarkable for its stern realism. The pain and sense of defeat comes out in every feature. Moreover, the nationality of the fallen warrior is clearly expressed in the deep indentation between the heavy brow and the prominent nose, in the face, shaven, except the upper lip, in the uncouth, fleshy body, in the rough hands and feet. Usually the artist preferred to hint at the race by some peculiarities of costume. Here nothing but uncompromising realism of feature will satisfy the sculptor. A companion piece to the Wounded Gaul, though less famous, is the group of the Villa Ludovisi, which represents a Gaul, who has slain his wife, in the act of stabbing himself in the neck.

In addition to inspiring the sculptures at Pergamon, Attalus dedicated to the gods of Athens a votive offering in return for the help which they had given him. This was placed on the Acropolis at Athens. It consisted of four groups, representing the gigantomachia or giant combat, the battle of the Amazons, the battle of Marathon, and the victory of Attalus. Figures from these survive, a dead Amazon at Naples and a kneeling Persian at the Vatican being the best known.

Another state which became famous in the declining days of Greek art was the republic of Rhodes. The Rhodian sculptors learned their anatomy from Lysippos, and caught their dramatic instinct from the artists of Pergamon. Two of the most famous sculpture groups in the world were produced at Rhodes, the Laocoon, now at the Vatican, and the Farnese Bull, now at Naples. The former was the work of three artists, given by Pliny as Agesandros, Athanodorus, and Polydorus. It has been accepted as one of the masterpieces of the world, but as we shall see, it is manifestly a work of a time of decadence.

The Laocoon illustrates excellently the extreme results of the pathetic tendency. The priest Laocoon is represented at the moment when the serpents of Apollo surround him and his two sons, born through their father's sin, and bear them all three down to destruction. The younger son, fatally bitten, falls back in death agony. The father yields slowly, his desperation giving way before the merciless strength of the serpents. The elder son shrinks away in horror though bound fast by the inevitable coils.

The Laocoon shows the pathetic tendency at its utmost. The technical difficulties have been overcome with astonishing success, and though the combination of figures is impossible in life, it is marvellously effective in art. But the group depends for its interest purely on the accidental horror of the situation. There is no hint in the sculpture of the motive of the tragedy, no suggestion of ethical significance in the suffering portrayed. It does not connect itself with any principle of life. In this way the work became a superb piece of display, a TOUR DE FORCE of surprising composition but with little serious meaning.

The same judgment may be extended to the Farnese Bull, the work of Apollonius and Tauriscos, artists from Tralles who lived at Rhodes. This group represents the punishment of the cruel Dirke at the hands of the sons of Antiope. The beautiful queen clasps the knee of one of the sons praying for grace, while the other boy is about to throw over her the noose which is to bind her to the bull. Antiope stands in the background, a mere lay figure, and scattered about are numerous small symbolical figures. Like the Laocoon the Farnese Bull exhibits surprising mastery of technical obstacles, but, like the Laocoon, it falls short of true tragic grandeur. In a greater degree than the Laocoon it trenches upon the province of painting. It is more complicated in its subject-matter; and the appearance in the group of many small subsidiary figures, which in a painting might have been given their proper value, being in the marble of the same relief and distinction as the major characters, give a somewhat absurd effect. The little goddess who sits in the foreground, for instance, is smaller than the dog. Again, there is less of the motive shown than in the Laocoon. The group is seized at the moment preceding the frightful catastrophe, but that moment is as full of agony as the succeeding ones, and in addition there is the feeling of suspense and oppression that comes from the unfinished tragedy. Altogether, the group, in spite of the marvellous technical skill shown in details, is a failure when judged on general lines. Its interest lies in momentary and apparently ummotived suffering, not in any truly serious conception of life.

With the conquest of Greece by Rome, the final stage of Greek art begins. But the vigor and originality had departed. The sculptors aimed at and attained technical correctness, academic beauty of form, sensuous feeling, perfection of details, but they lost all imaginative power. A good example of the work of this period is found in the Apollo Belvidere now in the Vatican. This famous statue is an early Roman copy of a Greek original. It represents the god advancing easily, full of vigor and grace. It is marvellously correct in drawing, but quite without feeling of any kind.

Another work of this period is the sleeping Ariadne of the Vatican. This represents a woman reclining in a studied sentimental attitude, her arms thrown about her head, her body swathed in its protecting drapery. To the same period also belongs almost the last notable work of Greek art, the degenerate and sensuous conception of the Venus de Medici. In this statue the goddess stands as if rising from the sea, her attitude reserved, yet coquettish and self-conscious. The form is technically perfect, graceful, and soft in its refinement, but compared with the earlier Aphrodites it is an unworthy successor.

Still another famous statue is the Borghese Gladiator, of Agasius of Ephesus, now in the Louvre. The statue is merely a bit of display, an effort to parade technical skill and anatomical knowledge. The gladiator throws his weight strongly on his right leg, and holds one arm high above his head, giving to his whole body an effect of straining. The figure is strong and wiry. Agasius was distinctly an imitator, as were most of the artists of this age, among whom must be reckoned the skilful sculptor of the crouching Venus, also in the Louvre. The goddess is shown as bending down in graceful curves until her body is supported on the right leg, which is bent double. The form is strong and healthy, graceful and easy in its somewhat constrained posture.

During all of this final period Greek art was very largely influenced by the relations which existed between Greece and Rome. About the year 200 B.C. the Roman conquest of Greece led to an important traffic in works of art between Rome and the Greek cities. For a time, indeed, statues formed a recognized part of the booty which graced every Roman triumph. M. Fulvius Nobilior carried away not less than five hundred and fifteen. After the period of conquest the importation of Greek statues continued at Rome, and in time Greek artists also began to remove thither, so that Rome became not only the centre for the collection of Greek works of art, but the chief seat of their production. At this time the Roman religious conceptions were identified with those of Greece, and the Greek gods received the Latin names by which we now know them. The influence of the Greeks upon Rome was very marked, but the reflex influence of the material civilization of Italy upon Greek art was altogether bad, and thus the splendor of classical art went out in dilletantism and weakness.

The destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians makes a break in the artistic history of the world. Not for many centuries was there a vestige of artistic production. Even when in Italy and France the monks began to make crude attempts to reach out for and represent in painting and sculpture imaginative conceptions of things beautiful, they took their material exclusively from Christian sources. The tradition of classical stories had nearly vanished from the mind of Europe. Not until the Renaissance restored the knowledge of classical culture to Europe do we find artists making any use of the wealth of imaginative material stored up in the myths of Greece. Then, indeed, by the discovery and circulation of the poets of mythology, the Greek stories and conceptions of characters, divine and human, became known once more and were used freely, remaining until the present day one chief source of material and subject-matter for the use of the painter and sculptor.

As Greek sculpture progressed, schools of artists arose in various cities, dependent usually for their fame on the ability of some individual sculptor. "Among these schools, those of Aegina and Athens are the most important. Of the former school the works of Onatus are by far the most notable.

Onatus was a contemporary of Canachos, and reached the height of his fame in the middle of the fifth century before Christ. His most famous work was the scene where the Greek heroes draw lots for an opponent to Hector. It is not certain whether Onatus sculptured the groups which adorned the pediments of the temple of Athena at Aegina, groups now in the Glyptothek at Munich, but certainly these famous statues are decidedly in his style. Both pediments represent the battle over the body of Patroclus. The east pediment shows the struggle between Heracles and Laomedon. In each group a fallen warrior lies at the feet of the goddess, over whom she extends her protection. The Aeginetan marbles show the traces of dying archaism. The figures of the warriors are strongly moulded, muscular, but without grace. The same type is reproduced again and again among them. Even the wounded scarcely depart from it. The statues of the eastern pediment are probably later in date than those of the western, and in the former the dying warrior exhibits actual weakness and pain. In the western pediment the statue of the goddess is thoroughly archaic, stiff, uncompromisingly harsh, the features frozen into a conventional smile. In the eastern group the goddess, though still ungraceful, is more distinctly in action, and seems about to take part in the struggle. The Heracles of the eastern pediment, a warrior supported on one knee and drawing his bow, is, for the time, wonderfully vivid and strong. All of these statues are evidence of the rapid progress which Greek sculpture was making in the fifth century against the demands of hieratic conventionality.

The contemporary Athenian school boasted the names of Hegias, Critios, and Nesiotes. Their works have all perished, but a copy of one of the most famous works of Critios and Nesiotes, the statue of the Tyrannicides, is to be found in the Museum of Naples. Harmodius and Aristogeiton killed, in 514 B.C., the tyrant-ruler of Athens, Hipparchus. In consequence of this Athens soon became a republic, and the names of the first rebels were held in great honor. Their statues were set up on the Acropolis, first a group by Antenor, then the group in question by Critios and Nesiotes after the first had been carried away by Xerxes. The heroes, as we learn from the copies in Naples, were represented as rushing forward, one with a naked sword flashing above his head, the other with a mantle for defence thrown over his left arm. They differ in every detail of action and pose, yet they exemplify the same emotion, a common impulse to perform the same deed.

At Argus, contemporary with these early schools of Athens and Aegina, was a school of artists depending on the fame of the great sculptor Ageladas. He was distinguished for his statues in bronze of Zeus and Heracles, but his great distinction is not through works of his own, but is due to the fact that he was the teacher of Myron, Polycleitos, and Pheidias. These names with those of Pythagoras and Calamis bring us to the glorious flowering time of Greek sculpture.

Calamis, somewhat older than the others, was an Athenian, at least by residence. He carried on the measure of perfection which Athenian sculpture had already attained, and added grace and charm to the already powerful model which earlier workers had left him. None of his works survive, but from notices of critics we know that he excelled especially in modelling horses and other animals. His two race-horses in memory of the victory of Hiero of Syracuse at Olympia in 468 were considered unsurpassable. However, it is related that Praxiteles removed the charioteer from one of the groups of Calamis and replaced it by one of his own statues "that the men of Calamis might not be inferior to his horses." Thus it would appear that Calamis was less successful in dealing with the human body, though a statue of Aphrodite from his hand was proverbial, under the name Sosandra, for its grace and grave beauty.

Pythagoras of Rhegium carried on the realism, truth to nature, which was beginning to appear as an ideal of artistic representation. He is said to have been the first sculptor to mark the veins and sinews on the body.

In this vivid naturalness Pythagoras was himself far surpassed by Myron. Pythagoras had seen the importance of showing the effect of action in every portion of the body. Myron carried the minuteness of representation so far that his Statue of Ladas, the runner, was spoken of not as a runner, but as a BREATHER. This statue represented the victor of the foot-race falling, overstrained and dying, at the goal, the last breath from the tired lungs yet hovering upon the lips. More famous than the Ladas is the Discobolos , or disc-thrower, of which copies exist at Rome, one being at the Vatican, the other at the Palazzo Massimi alle Colonne. These, though doubtless far behind the original, serve to show the marvellous power of portraying intense action which the sculptor possessed. The athlete is represented at the precise instant when he has brought the greatest possible bodily strength into play in order to give to the disc its highest force. The body is bent forward, the toes of one foot cling to the ground, the muscles of the torso are strained, the whole body is in an attitude of violent tension which can endure only for an instant. Yet the face is free from contortion, free from any trace of effort, calm and beautiful. This shows that Myron, intent as he was upon reproducing nature, could yet depart from his realistic formulae when the requirements of beautiful art demanded it.

The same delight in rapid momentary action which characterized the two statues of Myron already mentioned appears in a third, the statue of Marsyas astonished at the flute which Athene had thrown away, and which was to lead its finder into his fatal contest with Apollo. A copy of this work at the Lateran Museum represents the satyr starting back in a rapid mingling of desire and fear, which is stamped on his heavy face, as well as indicated in the movement of his body.

Myron's realism again found expression in the bronze cow, celebrated by the epigrams of contemporary poets for its striking naturalness. "Shepherd, pasture thy flock at a little distance, lest thinking thou seest the cow of Myron breathe, thou shouldst wish to lead it away with thine oxen," was one of them.

The value and originality of Myron's contributions to the progress of Greek sculpture were so great that he left behind him a considerable number of artists devoted to his methods. His son Lykios followed his father closely. In statues on the Acropolis representing two boys, one bearing a basin, one blowing the coals in a censer into a flame, he reminds one of the Ladas, especially in the second, where the action of breathing is exemplified in every movement of the body. Another famous work by a follower of Myron was the boy plucking a thorn from his foot, a copy of which is in the Rothschild collection.

 The frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigales has also been attributed to the school of Myron.  The remnants of this frieze, now in the British Museum, show the battle of the Centaurs and Amazons.  The figures have not the calm stateliness of bearing which characterizes those of the Parthenon frieze, but instead exhibit a wild vehemence of action which is, perhaps, directly due to the influence of Myron.

Another pupil of Ageladas, a somewhat younger contemporary of Pheidias, was Polycleitos. He excelled in representations of human, bodily beauty. Perfection of form was his aim, and so nearly did he seem to the ancients to have attained this object that his Doryphoros was taken by them as a model of the human figure. A copy of this statue exists in the Museum of Naples and represents a youth in the attitude of bearing a lance, quiet and reserved. The figure is rather heavily built, firm, powerful, and yet graceful, though hardly light enough to justify the praise of perfection which has been lavished upon it.

A companion statue to the Doryphorus of Polycleitos was his statue of the Diadumenos, or boy binding his head with a fillet. A supposed copy of this exists in the British Museum. It presents the same general characteristics as the Doryphorus, a well-modelled but thick-set figure standing in an attitude of repose.

What Polycleitos did for the male form in these two statues he did for the female form in his Amazon, which, according to a doubtful story, was adjudged in competition superior to a work by Pheidias. A statue supposed to be a copy of this masterpiece of Polycleitos is now in the Berlin Museum. It represents a woman standing in a graceful attitude beside a pillar, her left arm thrown above her head to free her wounded breast. The sculptor has succeeded admirably in catching the muscular force and firm hard flesh beneath the graceful curves of the woman warrior.

Polycleitos won his chief successes in portraying human figures. His statues of divinities are not numerous: a Zeus at Argos, an Aphrodite at Amyclae, and, more famous than either, the chryselephantine Hera for a temple between Argos and Mycenae. The goddess was represented as seated on a throne of gold, with bare head and arms. In her right hand was the sceptre crowned with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity; in her left, the pomegranate. There exists no certain copy of the Hera of Polycleitos. The head of Hera in Naples may, perhaps, give us some idea of the type of divine beauty preferred by the sculptor who was preeminent for his devotion to human beauty.

Polycleitos was much praised by the Romans Quintilian and Cicero, who nevertheless, held that though he surpassed the beauty of man in nature, yet he did not approach the beauty of the gods. It was reserved for Pheidias to portray the highest conceptions of divinity of which the Greek mind was capable in his statues of Athene in the Parthenon at Athens, and the Zeus of Olympus.

Pheidias lived in the golden age of Athenian art. The victory of Greece against Persia had been due in large measure to Athens, and the results of the political success fell largely to her. It is true the Persians had held the ground of Athens for weeks, and when, after the victory of Salamis, the people returned to their city, they found it in ruins. But the spirit of the Athenians had been stirred, and in spite of the hostility of Persia, the jealousy of neighboring states, and the ruin of the city, the people felt new confidence in themselves and their divinity, and were more than ever ready to strive for the leadership of Greece. Religious feeling, gratitude to the gods who had preserved them, and civic pride in the glory of their own victorious city, all inspired the Athenians. After the winter in which the Persians were finally beaten at Plataea, the Athenians began to rebuild. For a while their efforts were confined to rendering the city habitable and defensible, since the activity of the little state was largely political. But when th leadership of Athens in Greece had become firmly established under Theistocles and Cimon, the third president of the democracy, Pericles, found leisure to turn to the artistic development of the city. The time was ripe, for the artistic progress of the people had been no less marked than their political. The same long training in valor and temperance which gave Athens her statesmen, Aristides and Pericles, gave her her artists and poets also. Pericles became president of the city in 444 B.C., just at the time when the decorative arts were approaching perfection under Pheidias.

Pheidias was an Athenian by birth, the son of Charmides. He studied first under Hegias, then under Ageladas the Argive. He became the most famous sculptor of his time, and when Pericles wanted a director for his great monumental works at Athens, he summoned Pheidias. Artists from all over Hellas put themselves at his disposal, and under his direction the Parthenon was built and adorned with the most splendid statuary the world has ever known.

The Parthenon was fashioned in honor of Athene or Minerva, the guardian deity of Athens, the preserver of Hellas, whom the Athenians in their gratitude sought to make the sovereign goddess of the land which she had saved. The eastern gable of the temple was adorned with a group representing the appearance of Minerva before the gods of Olympus. In the left angle of the gable appeared Helios, the dawn, rising from the sea. In the right angle Selene, evening, sank from sight. Next to Helios was a figure representing either Dionysus or Olympus, and beside were seated two figures, perhaps Persephone and Demeter, perhaps two Horae. Approaching these as a messenger was Iris. Balancing these figures on the side next Selene were two figures, representing Aphrodite in the arms of Peitho, or perhaps Thalassa, goddess of the sea, leaning against Gaia, the earth. Nearer the centre on this side was Hestia, to whom Hermes brought the tidings. The central group is totally lost, but must have been made up of Zeus, Athene, and Vulcan, with, perhaps, others of the greater divinities.

The group of the western pediment represented Athene and Poseidon, contesting for the supremacy of Athens. Athene's chariot is driven by Victory, Poseidon's by Amphitrite. Although the greater part of the attendant deities have disappeared, we know the gods of the rivers of Athens, Eridanas and Ilissos, in reclining postures filled the corners of the pediment. One of these has survived, and remains in its perfection of grace and immortal beauty to attest the wonderful skill that directed the chiselling of the whole group.

Although the gable groups have suffered terribly in the historic vicissitudes of the Parthenon, still enough remains of them to show the dignity of their conception, the rhythm of composition, and the splendid freedom of their workmanship. The fragments were purchased by Lord Elgin early in this century and are now in the British Museum.

The frieze of the Parthenon, executed under the supervision of Pheidias, represented one of the most glorious religious ceremonies of the Greek, the Pan-Athenaic procession. The deities surround Zeus as spectators of the scene, and toward them winds the long line of virgins bearing incense, herds of animals for sacrifice, players upon the lute and lyre, chariots and riders. On the western front the movement has not yet begun, and the youths and men stand in disorder, some binding their mantles, some mounting their horses. The frieze is noteworthy for its expression of physical and intellectual beauty which marked the highest conceptions of Greek art, and for the studied mingling of forcible action and gracious repose. The larger part of this frieze has been preserved and is to be seen at the British Museum.

The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metope, represents the contest between centaurs and the Lapithae with some scenes interspersed of which the subjects cannot now be determined. The frieze is in low relief, the figures scarcely starting from the background. The sculptures of the metope, on the contrary, are in high relief, frequently giving the impression of marbles detached from the background altogether. They were, moreover, colored. Or course, Pheidias himself cannot have had more than the share of general director in the sculptures of the metope; many of them are manifestly executed by inferior hands. Nevertheless, the mind of a great designer is evident in the wonderful variety of posture and action which the figures show. Indeed, when we consider the immense number of figures employed, it becomes evident that not even all the sculptures of the pediments can have been executed entirely by Pheidias, who was already probably well advanced in life when he began the Parthenon decorations; yet all the sculptures were the work of Pheidias or of pupils working under him, and although traces may be found of the influence of other artists, of Myron, for example, in the freedom and naturalness of the action in the figures of the frieze, yet all the decorations of the Parthenon may fairly be said to belong to the Pheidian school of sculpture.

The fame of Pheidias himself, however, rested very largely on three great pieces of art work: The Athene Promachos, the Athene Parthenos, and the Olympian Zeus. The first of these was a work of Pheidias's youth. It represented the goddess standing gazing toward Athens lovingly and protectingly. She held a spear in one hand, the other supported a buckler. The statue was nine feet high. It was dignified and noble, but at the time of its conception Pheidias had not freed himself from the convention and traditions of the earlier school, and the stiff folds of the tunic, the cold demeanor of the goddess, recall the masters whom Pheidias was destined to supersede. No copy of this statue survives, and hence a description of it must be largely conjectural, made up from hints gleaned from Athenian coins.

Pheidias sculptured other statues of Athene, but none so wonderful as the Athene Parthenos, which, with the Olympian Zeus, was the wonder and admiration of the Greek world. The Athene Parthenos was designed to stand as an outward symbol of the divinity in whose protecting might the city had conquered and grown strong, in whose honor the temple had been built in which this statue was to shine as queen. The Olympian Zeus was the representative of that greater divinity which all Hellas united in honoring. We may gain from the words of Pausanias some idea of the magnificence of this statue, but of its unutterable majesty we can only form faint images in the mind, remembering the strength and grace of the figures of the pediments of the temple at Athens. "Zeus," says Pausanias, "is seated on a throne of ivory and gold; upon his head is laced a garland made in imitation of olive leaves. He bears a Victory in his right hand, also crowned and made in gold and ivory, and holding in her right hand a little fillet. In his left hand the god holds a sceptre, made of all kinds of metals; the bird perched on the tip of the sceptre is an eagle. The shoes of Zeus are also of gold, and of gold his mantle, and underneath this mantle are figures and lilies inlaid."

Both the Olympian Zeus and the Athene were of chryselephantine work offering enormous technical difficulties, but in spite of this both showed almost absolute perfection of form united with beauty of intellectual character to represent the godhead incarnate in human substance. These two statues may be taken as the noblest creations of the Greek imagination when directed to the highest objects of its contemplation. The beauty of the Olympian Zeus, according to Quintilian, "added a new element to religion."

In the works of art just mentioned the creative force of the Greeks attained its highest success. After the death of Pheidias his methods were carried on in a way by the sculptors who had worked under him and become subject to his influence; but as years went on, with less and less to remind us of the supreme perfection of the master. Among these pupils of Pheidias were Agoracritos and Colotes in Athens, Paionios, and Alcamenes. Of Paionios fortunately one statue survives in regard to which there can be no doubt. The Victory erected to the Olympian Zeus shows a tall goddess, strongly yet gracefully carved, posed forward with her drapery flattened closely against her body in front as if by the wind, and streaming freely behind. The masterpiece of Alcamenes, an Aphrodite, is known only by descriptions. The pediments of the temple at Olympia have been assigned, by tradition, one to Alcamenes, one to Paionios. They are, however, so thoroughly archaic in style that it seems impossible to reconcile them with what we know of the work of the men to whom they are attributed. The group of the eastern front represented the chariot races of Oinomaos and Pelops; that of the western, the struggle of the Centaurs and Lapithae. In the latter the action is extremely violent, only the Apollo in the midst is calm and commanding. In both pediments there are decided approaches to realism.

In Athens, after Pheidias, the greatest sculptures were those used to adorn the Erechtheion. The group of Caryatids, maidens who stand erect and firm, bearing upon their heads the weight of the porch, is justly celebrated as an architectural device. At the same time, the maidens, though thus performing the work of columns, do not lose the grace and charm which naturally belongs to them.

Another post-Pheidian work at Athens was the temple of Nike Apteros, the wingless Victory. The bas-reliefs from this temple, now in the Acropolis Museum at Athens, one representing the Victory stooping to tie her sandal, another, the Victory crowning a trophy, recall the consummate grace of the art of Pheidias, the greatest Greek art.

Agoracritos left behind him works at Athens which in their perfection could scarcely be distinguished from the works of Pheidias himself, none of which have come down to us. But from the time of the Peloponnesian war, the seeds of decay were in the art of Hellas, and they ripened fast. In one direction Callimachus carried refined delicacy and formal perfection to excess; and in the other Demetrios, the portrait sculptor, put by ideal beauty for the striking characteristics of realism. Thus the strict reserve, the earnest simplicity of Pheidias and his contemporaries, were sacrificed sacrificed partly, it is true, to the requirements of a fuller spiritual life, partly to the demands of a wider knowledge and deeper passion. The legitimate effects of sculpture are strictly limited. Sculpture is fitted to express not temporary, accidental feeling, but permanent character; not violent action, but repose. In the great work of the golden age the thought of the artist was happily limited so that the form was adequate to its expression. One single motive was all that he tried to express a motive uncomplicated by details of specific situation, a type of general beauty unmixed with the peculiar suggestions of special and individual emotion. When the onward impulse led the artist to pass over the severe limits which bounded the thought of the earlier school, he found his medium becoming less adequate to the demands of his more detailed and circumstantial mental conception. The later sculpture, therefore, lacks in some measure the repose and entire assurance of the earlier. The earlier sculpture confines itself to broad, central lines of heroic and divine character, as in the two masterpieces of Pheidias. The latter dealt in great elaboration with the details and elements of the stories and characters that formed its subjects, as in the Niobe group, or the Laocoon, to be mentioned later.

These modern tendencies produced as the greatest artists of the later Greek type Scopas and Praxiteles.

Between these, however, and the earlier school which they superseded came the Athenian Kephisodotos, the father, it may be supposed of Praxiteles. His fame rests upon a single work, a copy of which has been discovered, the Eirene and Ploutos. In this, while the simplicity and strictness of the Pheidian ideal have been largely preserved, it has been used as the vehicle of deeper feeling and more spiritual life.

Scopas was born at Paros, and lived during the fist half of the fourth century. He did much decorative work including the pediments of the temple of Athena at Tegea. He participated also in the decoration of the Mausoleum erected by Artemisia to the memory of her husband. In this latter, the battle of the Amazons, though probably not the work of Scopas himself, shows in the violence of its attitudes and the pathos of its action the new elements of interest in Greek art with the introduction of which Scopas is connected. The fame of Scopas rests principally on the Niobe group which is attributed to him. The sculpture represents the wife of Amphion at the moment when the curse of Apollo and Diana falls upon her, and her children are slain before her eyes. The children, already feeling the arrows of the gods, are flying to her for protection. She tries in vain to shield her youngest born beneath her mantle, and turns as if to hide her face with its motherly pride just giving place to despair and agony. The whole group is free from contortion and grandly tragic. The original exists no longer, but copies of parts of the group are found in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence.

The Niobe group shows the distinction between Scopas and Praxiteles and the earlier artists in choice of subject and mode of treatment. The same distinction is shown by the Raging Bacchante of Scopas. The head is thrown back, the hair loosened, the garments floating in the wind, an ecstacy of wild, torrent- like action.

Of the work of Praxiteles we know more directly than of the work of any other Greek sculptor of the same remoteness, for one statue has come down to us actually from the master's own hand, and we possess good copies of several others. His statues of Aphrodite, of which there were at least five, are known to us by the figures on coins and by two works in the same style, the Aphrodite in the Glyptothek, and that of the Vatican. The most famous of all was the Aphrodite of Cnidos, which was ranked with the Olympian Zeus and was called one of the wonders of te world. King Nicomedes of Bithynia offered vainly to the people of Cnidos the entire amount of their state debt for its possession. Lucian described the goddess as having a smile somewhat proud and disdainful; yet the eyes, moist and kindly, glowed with tenderness and passion, and the graceful lines of the shoulders, the voluptuous curves of the thighs, are full of sensuous feeling. The goddess, as represented in coins, stood beside a vase, over which her drapery is falling, while with her right hand she shields herself modestly. The head of Aphrodite in the British Museum, with its pure brows, its delicate, voluptuous lips, and sweet, soft skin, is, perhaps, the nearest approach which we possess to the glorious beauty of the original.

Other Aphrodites, the draped statue of Cos among them, and several statues of Eros, representing tender, effeminate youths, illustrate further the departure which Praxiteles marks from the restraint of Pheidias. Another of his masculine figures is the graceful Apollo with the Lizard. The god, strong in his youthful suppleness, is leaning against a tree threatening with his darts a small lizard which is seeking to climb up. Still another type of masculine grace left us by Praxiteles is his statue of the Satyr, of which a copy exists in the Capitoline Museum. The Satyr, in the hands of Praxiteles, lost all his ancient uncouthness, and became a strong, graceful youth, with soft, full form. In the Capitoline representation the boy is leaning easily against a tree, throwing his body into the most indolent posture, which brings out the soft, feminine curves of hips and legs. In fact, so thoroughly is the feminine principle worked into the statues of the Apollo, the Eros, and the Satyr, that this characteristic became considered typical of Praxiteles, and when, in 1877, was discovered the one authentic work which we possess of this artist, the great Hermes of Olympia, critics were at a loss to reconcile this figure with what was already known of the sculptor's work, some holding that it must be a work of his youth, when, through his father, Kephisodotos, he felt the force of the Pheidian tradition, others that there must have been two sculptors bearing the great name of Praxiteles.

The Hermes was found lacking the right arm and both legs below the knees, but the marvellous head and torso are perfectly preserved. The god is without the traditional symbols of his divinity. He is merely a beautiful man. He stands leaning easily against a tree, supporting on one arm the child Dionysus, to whom he turns his gracious head with the devotion and love of a protector. The face, in its expression of sweet majesty, is distinctly a personal conception. The low forehead, the eyes far apart, the small, playful mouth, the round, dimpled chin, all bear evidence to the individual quality which Praxiteles infused into the ideal thought of the god. The body, though at rest, is instinct with life and activity, in spite of its grace. In short, the form of the god has the superb perfection, as the face has the dignity, which was attributed to Pheidias. Nevertheless, the Hermes illustrates sensual loveliness of the later school. The freedom with which the god is conceived belongs to an age when the chains of religious belief sat lightly upon the artist. The gds of Praxiteles are the gods of human experience, and in his treatment of them he does not always escape the tendency of the age of decline to put pathos and passion in the place of eternal majesty.

The influence of Scopas and Praxiteles continued to be felt through a number of artists who worked in sufficient harmony with them to be properly called of their school. To one of these followers of Praxiteles, some say as a copy of a work of the master himself, we must attribute the Demeter now in the British Museum. This is a pathetic illustration of suffering motherhood. There is no exaggeration in the grief, only the calm dignity of a sorrow which in spite of hope refuses to be comforted.

Hermod then rode back to Asgard and gave an account of all he had heard and witnessed.

The gods upon this despatched messengers throughout the world to beg every thing to weep in order that Baldur might be delivered from Hel. All things very willingly complied with this request, both men and every other living being, as well as earths, and stones, and trees, and metals, just as we have all seen these things weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one. As the messengers were returning, they found an old hag named Thaukt sitting in a cavern, and begged her to weep Baldur out of Hel. But she answered,

"Thaukt will wail With dry tears Baldur's bale-fire. Let Hela keep her own."

It was strongly suspected that this hag was no other than Loki himself, who never ceased to work evil among gods and men. So Baldur was prevented from coming back to Asgard. (In Longfellow's Poems, vol. 1, page 379, will be found a poem entitled Tegner's Drapa, upon the subject of Baldur's death.)

Among Matthew Arnold's Poems is one called "Balder Death" beginning thus:

"So on the floor lay Balder dead; and round Lay thickly strewn swords, axes, darts and spears, Which all the Gods in sport had idly thrown At Balder, whom no weapon pierced or clave; But in his breast stood fixt the fatal bough Of mistletoe, which Lok the Accuser gave To Hoder, and unwitting Hoder threw; "Gainst that alone had Balder's life no charm. And all the Gods and all the heroes came And stood round Balder on the bloody floor Weeping and wailing; and Valhalla rang Up to its golden roof with sobs and cries; And on the table stood the untasted meats, And in the horns and gold-rimmed skulls the wine; And now would night have fallen and found them yet Wailing; but otherwise was Odin's will."

THE FUNERAL OF BALDUR

The gods took up the dead body and bore it to the sea-shore where stood Baldur's ship Hringham, which passed for the largest in the world. Baldur's dead body was put on the funeral pile, on board the ship, and his wife Nanna was so struck with grief at the sight that she broke her heart, and her body was burned on the same pile with her husband's. There was a vast concourse of various kinds of people at Baldur's obsequies. First came Odin accompanied by Frigga, the Valkyrior, and his ravens; then Frey in his car drawn by Gullinbursti, the boar; Heimdall rode his horse Gulltopp, and Freya drove in her chariot drawn by cats. There were also a great many Frost giants and giants of the mountain present. Baldur's horse was led to the pile fully caparisoned and consumed in the same flames with his master.

But Loki did not escape his deserved punishment. When he saw how angry the gods were, he fled to the mountain, and there built himself a hut with four doors, so that he could see every approaching danger. He invented a net to catch the fishes, such as fishermen have used since his time. But Odin found out his hiding-place and the gods assembled to take him. He, seeing this, changed himself into a salmon, and lay hid among the stones of the brook. But the gods took his net and dragged the brook, and Loki finding he must be caught, tried to leap over the net; but Thor caught him by the tail and compressed it so, that salmons every since have had that part remarkably fine and thin. They bound him with chains and suspended a serpent over his head, whose venom falls upon his face drop by drop. His wife Siguna sits by his side and catches the drops as they fall, in a cup; but when she carries it away to empty it, the venom falls upon Loki, which makes him howl with horror, and twist his body about so violently that the whole earth shakes, and this produces what men call earthquakes.

THE ELVES

The Edda mentions another class of beings, inferior to the gods, but still possessed of great power; these were called Elves. The white spirits, or Elves of Light, were exceedingly fair, more brilliant than the sun, and clad in garments of delicate and transparent texture. They loved the light, were kindly disposed to mankind, and generally appeared as fair and lovely children. Their country was called Alfheim, and was the domain of Freyr, the god of the sun, in whose light they were always sporting.

The black of Night Elves were a different kind of creatures. Ugly, long-nosed dwarfs, of a dirty brown color, they appeared only at night, for they avoided the sun as their most deadly enemy, because whenever his beams fell upon any of them they changed them immediately into stones. Their language was the echo of solitudes, and their dwelling-places subterranean caves and clefts. They were supposed to have come into existence as maggots, produced by the decaying flesh of Ymir's body, and were afterwards endowed by the gods with a human form and great understanding. They were particularly distinguished for a knowledge of the mysterious powers of nature, and for the runes which they carved and explained. They were the most skilful artificers of all created beings, and worked in metals and in wood. Among their most noted works were Thor's hammer, and the ship Skidbladnir, which they gave to Freyr, and which was so large that it could contain all the deities with their war and household implements, but so skilfully was it wrought that when folded together it could be put into a side pocket.

RAGNABOK, THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

It was a firm belief of the northern nations that a time would come when all the visible creation, the gods of Valhalla and Niffleheim, the inhabitants of Jotunheim, Alfheim, and Midgard, together with their habitations, would be destroyed. The fearful day of destruction will not, however, be without its forerunners. First will come a triple winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the heavens, the frost be very severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun impart no gladness. Three such winters will pass away without being tempered by a single summer. Three other similar winters will then follow, during which war and discord will spread over the universe. The earth itself will be frightened and begin to tremble, the sea leave its basin, the heavens tear asunder, and men perish in great numbers, and the eagles of the air feast upon their still quivering bodies. The wolf Fenris will now break his bands, the Midgard serpent rise out of her bed in the sea, and Loki, released from his bonds, will join the enemies of the gods. Amidst the general devastation the sons of Muspelheim will rush forth under their leader Surtur, before and behind whom are flames and burning fire. Onward they ride over Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, which breaks under the horses' hoofs. But they, disregarding its fall, direct their course to the battle-field called Vigrid. Thither also repair the wolf Fenris, the Midgard serpent, Loki with all the followers of Hela, and the Frost giants.

Heimdall now stands up and sounds the Giallar horn to assemble the gods and heroes for the contest. The gods advance, led on by Odin, who engages the wolf Fenris, but falls a victim to the monster, who is, however, slain by Vidar, Odin's son. Thor gains great renown by killing the Midgard serpent, but recoils and falls dead, suffocated with the venom which the dying monster vomits over him. Loki and Heimdall meet and fight till they are both slain. The Gods and their enemies having fallen in battle, Surtur, who has killed Dreyr, darts fire and flames over the world, and the whole universe is burned up. The sun becomes dim, the earth sinks into the ocean, the stars fall from heaven, and time is no more.

After this Alfadur (the almighty) will cause a new heaven and a new earth to arise out of the sea. The new earth, filled with abundant supplies, will spontaneously produce its fruits without labor or care. Wickedness and misery will no more be known, but the gods and men will live happily together.

RUNIC LETTERS

One cannot travel far in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, without meeting with great stones, of different forms, engraven with characters called Runic, which appear at first sight very different from all we know. The letters consist almost invariably of straight lines, in the shape of little sticks either singly or put together. Such sticks were in early times used by the northern nations for the purpose of ascertaining future events. The sticks were shaken up, and from the figures that they formed a kind of divination was derived.

The Runic characters were of various kinds. They were chiefly used for magical purposes. The noxious, or, as they called them, the BITTER runes, were employed to bring various evils on their enemies; the favorable averted misfortune. Some were medicinal, others employed to win love, etc. In later times they were frequently used for inscriptions, of which more than a thousand have been found. The language is a dialect of the Gothic, called Norse, still in use in Iceland. The inscriptions may therefore be read with certainty, but hitherto very few have been found which throw the least light on history. They are mostly epitaphs on tombstones.

Gray's ode on the Descent of Odin contains an allusion to the use of Runic letters for incantation:

"Facing to the northern clime, Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme; Thrice pronounced, in accents dread, The thrilling verse that wakes the dead, Till from out the hollow ground Slowly breathed a sullen sound."

THE SKALDS

The Skalds were the bards and poets of the nation, a very important class of men in all communities in an early stage of civilization. They are the depositaries of whatever historic lore there is, and it is their office to mingle something of intellectual gratification with the rude feasts of the warriors, by rehearsing, with such accompaniments of poetry and music as their skill can afford, the exploits of their heroes living or dead. The compositions of the Skalds were called Sagas, many of which have come down to us, and contain valuable materials of history, and a faithful picture of the state of society at the time to which they relate.

ICELAND

The Eddas and Sagas have come to us from Iceland. The following extract from Carlyle's Lectures on Heroes and Hero worship gives an animated account of the region where the strange stories we have been reading had their origin. Let the reader contrast it for a moment with Greece, the parent of classical mythology.

"In that strange island, Iceland, burst up, the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea, a wild land of barrenness and lava, swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild, gleaming beauty in summer time, towering up there stern and grim in the North Ocean, with its snow yokuls (mountains), roaring geysers (boiling springs), sulphur pools, and horrid volcanic chasms, like the vast, chaotic battle-field of Frost and Fire, where, of all places, we least looked for literature or written memorials, the record of these things was written down. On the seaboard of this wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle can subsist, and men by means of them and of what the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men these, men who had deep thoughts in them and uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost had Iceland not been burst up from the sea, not been discovered by the Northmen!"

Chapter XXXIV The Druids Iona

The Druids were the priests or ministers of religion among the ancient Celtic nations in Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Our information respecting them is borrowed from notices in the Greek and Roman writers, compared with the remains of Welsh and Gaelic poetry still extant.

The Druids combined the functions of the priest, the magistrate, the scholar, and the physician. They stood to the people of the Celtic tribes in a relation closely analogous to that in which the Brahmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the priests of the Egyptians stood to the people respectively by whom they were revered.

The Druids taught the existence of one God, to whom they gave a name "Be'al," which Celtic antiquaries tell us means "the life of everything," or "the source of all beings,:" and which seems to have affinity with the Phoenician Baal. What renders this affinity more striking is that the Druids as well as the Phoenicians identified this, their supreme deity, with the Sun. Fire was regarded as a symbol of the divinity. The Latin writers assert that the Druids also worshipped numerous inferior Gods. They used no images to represent the object of their worship, nor did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the performance of their sacred rites. A circle of stones (each stone generally of vast size) enclosing an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in diameter, constituted their sacred place. The most celebrated of these now remaining is Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, England.

These sacred circles were generally situated near some stream, or under the shadow of a grove or wide-spreading oak. In the centre of the circle stood the Cromlech or altar, which was a large stone, placed in the manner of a table upon other stones set up on end. The Druids had also their high places, which were large stones or piles of stones on the summits of hills. These were called Cairns, and were used in the worship of the deity under the symbol of the sun.

That the Druids offered sacrifices to their deity there can be no doubt. But there is some uncertainty as to what they offered, and of the ceremonies connected with their religious services we know almost nothing. The classical (Roman) writers affirm that they offered on great occasions human sacrifices; as for success in war or for relief from dangerous diseases. Caesar has given a detailed account of the manner in which this was done. "They have images of immense size, the limbs of which are framed with twisted twigs and filled with living persons. These being set on fire, those within are encompassed by the flames." Many attempts have been made by Celtic writers to shake the testimony of the Roman historians to this fact, but without success.

The Druids observed two festivals in each year. The former took place in the beginning of May, and was called Beltane or "fire of God." On this occasion a large fire was kindled on some elevated spot, in honor of the sun, whose returning beneficence they thus welcomed after the gloom and desolation of winter. Of this custom a trace remains in the name given to Whitsunday in parts of Scotland to this day. Sir Walter Scott uses the word in the Boat Song in the Lady of the Lake:

"Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain, Blooming at Beltane in winter to fade."

The other great festival of the Druids was called "Samh'in," or "fire of peace," and was held on Hallow-eve (first of November), which still retains this designation in the Highlands of Scotland. On this occasion the Druids assembled in solemn conclave, in the most central part of the district, to discharge the judicial functions of their order. All questions, whether public or private, all crimes against person or property, were at this time brought before them for adjudication. With these judicial acts were combined certain superstitious usages, especially the kindling of the sacred fire, from which all the fires in the district which had been beforehand scrupulously extinguished, might be relighted. This usage of kindling fires on Hallow-eve lingered in the British Islands long after the establishment of Christianity.

Besides these two great annual festivals, the Druids were in the habit of observing the full moon, and especially the sixth day of the moon. On the latter they sought the mistletoe, which grew on their favorite oaks, and to which, as well as to the oak itself, they ascribed a peculiar virtue and sacredness. The discovery of it was an occasion of rejoicing and solemn worship. "They call it," says Pliny, "by a word in their language which means 'heal- all,' and having made solemn preparation for feasting and sacrifice under the tree, they drive thither two milk-white bulls, whose horns are then for the first time bound. The priest then, robed in white, ascends the tree, and cuts off the mistletoe with a golden sickle. It is caught in a white mantle, after which they proceed to slay the victims, at the same time praying that god would render his gift prosperous to those to whom he had given it. They drink the water in which it has been infused, and think it a remedy for all diseases. The mistletoe is a parasitic plant, and is not always nor often found on the oak, so that when it is found it is the more precious."

The Druids were the teachers of morality as well as of religion. Of their ethical teaching a valuable specimen is preserved in the Triads of the Welsh Bards, and from this we may gather that their views of moral rectitude were on the whole just, and that they held and inculcated many very noble and valuable principles of conduct. They were also the men of science and learning of their age and people. Whether they were acquainted with letters or not has been disputed, though the probability is strong that they were, to some extent. But it is certain that they committed nothing of their doctrine, their history, or their poetry to writing. Their teaching was oral, and their literature (if such a word may be used in such a case) was preserved solely by tradition. But the Roman writers admit that "they paid much attention to the order and laws of nature, and investigated and taught to the youth under their charge many things concerning the stars and their motions, the size of the world and the lands , and concerning the might and power of the immortal gods."

Their history consisted in traditional tales, in which the heroic deeds of their forefathers were celebrated. These were apparently in verse, and thus constituted part of the poetry as well as the history of the Druids. In the poems of Ossian we have, if not the actual productions of Druidical times, what may be considered faithful representations of the songs of the Bards.

The Bards were an essential part of the Druidical hierarchy. One author, Pennant, says, "The bards were supposed to be endowed with powers equal to inspiration. They were the oral historians of all past transactions, public and private. They were also accomplished genealogists."

Pennant gives a minute account of the Eisteddfods or sessions of the bards and minstrels, which were held in Wales for many centuries, long after the Druidical priesthood in its other departments became extinct. At these meetings none but bards of merit were suffered to rehearse their pieces, and minstrels of skill to perform. Judges were appointed to decide on their respective abilities, and suitable degrees were conferred. In the earlier period the judges were appointed by the Welsh princes, and after the conquest of Wales, by commission from the kings of England. Yet the tradition is that Edward I., in revenge for the influence of the bards, in animating the resistance of the people to his sway, persecuted them with great cruelty. This tradition has furnished the poet Gray with the subject of his celebrated ode, the Bard.

There are still occasional meetings of the lovers of Welsh poetry and music, held under the ancient name. Among Mrs. Heman's poems is one written for an Eisteddfod, or meeting of Welsh Bards, held in London May 22, 1822. It begins with a description of the ancient meeting, of which the following lines are a part:

"----- midst the eternal cliffs, whose strength defied The crested Roman in his hour of pride; And where the Druid's ancient cromlech frowned, And the oaks breathed mysterious murmurs round, There thronged the inspired of yore! On plain or height, In the sun's face, beneath the eye of light, And baring unto heaven each noble head, Stood in the circle, where none else might tread."

The Druidical system was at its height at the time of the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar. Against the Druids, as their chief enemies, these conquerors of the world directed their unsparing fury. The Druids, harassed at all points on the main-land, retreated to Anglesey and Iona, where for a season they found shelter, and continued their now-dishonored rites.

The Druids retained their predominance in Iona and over the adjacent islands and main-land until they were supplanted and their superstitions overturned by the arrival of St. Columba, the apostle of the Highlands, by whom the inhabitants of that district were first led to profess Christianity.

IONA

One of the smallest of the British Isles, situated near a ragged and barren coast, surrounded by dangerous seas, and possessing no sources of internal wealth, Iona has obtained an imperishable place in history as the seat of civilization and religion at a time when the darkness of heathenism hung over almost the whole of Northern Europe. Iona or Icolmkill is situated at the extremity of the island of Mull, from which it is separated by a strait of half a mile in breadth, its distance from the main-land of Scotland being thirty-six miles.

Columba was a native of Ireland, and connected by birth with the princes of the land. Ireland was at that time a land of gospel light, while the western and northern parts of Scotland were still immersed in the darkness of heathenism. Columba, with twelve friends landed on the island of Iona in the year of our Lord 563, having made the passage in a wicker boat covered with hides. The Druids who occupied the island endeavored to prevent his settling there, and the savage nations on the adjoining shores incommoded him with their hostility, and on several occasions endangered his life by their attacks. Yet by his perseverance and zeal he surmounted all opposition, procured from the king a gift of the island, and established there a monastery of which he was the abbot. He was unwearied in his labors to disseminate a knowledge of the Scriptures throughout the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and such was the reverence paid him that though not a bishop, but merely a presbyter and monk, the entire province with its bishops was subject to him and his successors. The Pictish monarch was so impressed with a sense of his wisdom and worth that he held him in the highest honor, and the neighboring chiefs and princes sought his counsel and availed themselves of his judgment in settling their disputes.

When Columba landed on Iona he was attended by twelve followers whom he had formed into a religious body, of which he was the head. To these, as occasion required, others were from time to time added, so that the original number was always kept up. Their institution was called a monastery, and the superior an abbot, but the system had little in common with the monastic institutions of later times. The name by which those who submitted to the rule were known was that of Culdees, probably from the Latin "cultores Dei" worshippers of God. They were a body of religious persons associated together for the purpose of aiding each other in the common work of preaching the gospel and teaching youth, as well as maintaining in themselves the fervor of devotion by united exercises of worship. On entering the order certain vows were taken by the members, but they were not those which were usually imposed by monastic orders, for of these, which are three, celibacy, poverty, and obedience, the Culdees were bound to none except the third. To poverty they did not bind themselves; on the contrary, they seem to have labored diligently to procure for themselves and those dependent on them the comforts of life. Marriage also was allowed them, and most of them seem to have entered into that state. True, their wives were not permitted to reside with them at the institution, but they had a residence assigned to them in an adjacent locality. Near Iona there is an island which still bears the name of "Eilen nam ban," women's island, where their husbands seem to have resided with them, except when duty required their presence in the school or the sanctuary.

Campbell, in his poem of Reullura, alludes to the married monks of Iona:

" -----The pure Culdees Were Albyn's earliest priests of God, Ere yet an island of her seas By foot of Saxon monk was trod, Long ere her churchmen by bigotry Were barred from holy wedlock's tie. 'Twas then that Aodh, famed afar, In Iona preached the word with power. And Reullura, beauty's star, Was the partner of his bower."

In one of his Irish Melodies, Moore gives the legend of St. Senanus and the lady who sought shelter on the island, but was repulsed:

"Oh, haste and leave this sacred isle, Unholy bark, ere morning smile; For on thy deck, though dark it be, A female form I see; And I have sworn this sainted sod Shall ne'er by woman's foot be trod.

In these respects and in others the Culdees departed from the established rules of the Romish Church, and consequently were deemed heretical. The consequence was that as the power of the latter advanced, that of the Culdees was enfeebled. It was not, however, till the thirteenth century that the communities of the Culdees were suppressed and the members dispersed. They still continued to labor as individuals, and resisted the inroads of Papa usurpation as they best might till the light of the Reformation dawned on the world.

Ionia, from its position in the western seas, was exposed to the assaults of the Norwegian and Danish rovers by whom those seas were infested, and by them it was repeatedly pillaged, its dwellings burned, and its peaceful inhabitants put to the sword. These unfavorable circumstances led to its gradual decline, which was expedited by the supervision of the Culdees throughout Scotland. Under the reign of Popery the island became the seat of a nunnery, the ruins of which are still seen. At the Reformation, the nuns were allowed to remain, living in community, when the abbey was dismantled.

Ionia is now chiefly resorted to by travellers on account of the numerous ecclesiastical and sepulchral remains which are found upon it. The principal of these are the Cathedral or Abbey Church, and the Chapel of the Nunnery. Besides these remains of ecclesiastical antiquity, there are some of an earlier date, and pointing to the existence on the island of forms of worship and belief different from those of Christianity. These are the circular Cairns which are found in various parts, and which seem to have been of Druidical origin. It is in reference to all these remains of ancient religion that Johnson exclaims, "That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona."

In the Lord of the Isles, Scott beautifully contrasts the church on Iona with the Cave of Staffa, opposite:

"Nature herself, it seemed, would raise A minister to her Maker's praise! Not for a meaner use ascend Her columns or her arches bend; Nor of a theme less solemn tells The mighty surge that ebbs and swells, And still between each awful pause, >From the high vault an answer draws, In varied tone, prolonged and high, That mocks the organ's melody; Nor doth its entrance front in vain To old Iona's holy fane, That Nature's voice might seem to say, Well hast thou done, frail child of clay, Thy humble powers that stately shrine Tasked high and hard but witness mine."

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE

We have seen throughout the course of this book how the Greek and Norse myths have furnished material for the poets, not only of Greece and Scandinavia, but also of modern times. In the same way these stories have been found capable of artistic treatment by painters, sculptors, and even by musicians. The story of Cupid and Psyche has not only been retold by poets from Apuleius to William Morris, but also drawn out in a series of frescoes by Raphael, and sculptured in marble by Canova. Even to enumerate the works of art of the modern and ancient world which depend for their subject-matter upon mythology would be a task for a book by itself. As we have been able to give only a few illustrations of the poetic treatment of some of the principal myths, so we shall have to content ourselves with a similarly limited view of the part played by them in other fields of art.

Of the statues made by the ancients themselves to represent their greater deities, a few have been already commented on. But it must not be thought that these splendid examples of plastic art, the Olympian Jupiter and the Athene of the Parthenon, represent the earliest attempts of the Greeks to give form to their myths in sculpture. Our most primitive sources of knowledge of much of Greek mythology are the Homeric poems, where the stories of Achilles and Ulysses have already taken on a poetic form, almost the highest conceivable. But in the other arts, Greek genius lagged behind. At the time when the Homeric poems were written, we find no traces of columned temples or magnificent statues. Scarcely were the domestic arts sufficiently advanced to allow the poet to describe dwellings glorious enough for his heroes to live in, or articles of common utility fit for their use. Of the two most famous works of art mentioned in the Iliad we must think of the statue of Athene at Troy (the Palladium) as a rude carving perhaps of wood, the arms of the goddess separated from the body only enough to allow her to hold the lance and spindle, which were the signs of her divinity. The splendor of the shield of Achilles must be attributed largely to the rich imagination of the poet.

Other works of art of this primitive age we know from descriptions in later classical writers. They attributed the rude statues which had come down to them to Daedalus and his pupils, and beheld them with wonder at their uncouth ugliness. It was long thought that these beginnings of Greek sculpture were to be traced to Egypt, but now-a-days scholars are inclined to take a different view. Egyptian sculpture was closely allied to architecture; the statues were frequently used for the columns of temples. Thus sculpture was subordinated to purely mechanical principles, and human figures were represented altogether in accordance with established conventions. Greek sculpture, on the contrary, even in its primitive forms was eminently natural, capable of developing a high degree of realism. From the first it was decorative in character, and this left the artist free to execute in his own way, provided only that the result should be in accordance with the highest type of beauty which he could conceive. An example of this early decorative art was the chest of Kypselos, on which stories from Homer were depicted in successive bands, the reliefs being partly inlaid with gold and ivory.

From the sixth century before Christ date three processes of great importance in the development of sculpture; the art of casting in bronze, the chiselling of marble, and the inlaying of gold and ivory on wood (chryselephantine work). As early Greek literature developed first among the island Greeks, so the invention of these three methods of art must br attributed to the colonists away from the original Hellas. To the Samians is probably due the invention of bronze casting, to the Chians the beginning of sculpture in marble. This latter development opened to Greek sculpture its great future. Marble work was carried on by a race of artists beginning with Melas in the seventh century and coming down to Boupalos and Athenis, the sons of Achermos, whose works survived to the time of Augustus. Chryselephantine sculpture began in Crete.

"Another time I was out in our cornfield, and hearing a rustling, looked through the stalks, and saw a brown bear with two cubs. She was slashing down the corn with her paws to get at the ears. She smelled me, and getting frightened. began to run. I had a dog with me this time, and shouted and rapped on the fence, and set him on her. He jumped up and snapped at her flanks, and every few instants she'd turn and give him a cuff, that would send him yards away. I followed her up, and just back of the farm she and her cubs took into a tree. I sent my dog home, and my father and some of the neighbors came. It had gotten dark by this time, so we built a fire under the tree, and watched all night, and told stories to keep each other awake. Toward morning we got sleepy, and the fire burnt low, and didn't that old bear and one cub drop right down among us and start off to the woods. That waked us up. We built up the fire and kept watch, so that the one cub, still in the tree, couldn't get away. Until daylight the mother bear hung around, calling to the cub to come down."

"Did you let it go, uncle?" asked Miss Laura.

"No, my dear, we shot it."

"How cruel!" cried Mrs. Wood.

"Yes, weren't we brutes?" said her husband; "but there was some excuse for us, Hattie. The bears ruined our farms. This kind of hunting that hunts and kills for the mere sake of slaughter is very different from that. I'll tell you what I've no patience with, and that's with these English folks that dress themselves up, and take fine horses and packs of dogs, and tear over the country after one little fox or rabbit. Bah, it's contemptible. Now if they were hunting cruel, man-eating tigers or animals that destroy property, it would be different thing."

CHAPTER XXIV THE RABBIT AND THE HEN

"YOU had foxes up in Maine, I suppose Mr. Wood, hadn't you?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

"Heaps of them. I always want to laugh when I think of our foxes, for they were so cute. Never a fox did I catch in a trap, though I'd set many a one. I'd take the carcass of some creature that had died, a sheep, for instance, and put it in a field near the woods, and the foxes would come and eat it. After they got accustomed to come and eat and no harm befell them, they would be unsuspecting. So just before a snowstorm, I'd take a trap and put it this spot. I'd handle it with gloves, and I'd smoke it, and rub fir boughs on it to take away the human smell, and then the snow would come and cover it up, and yet those foxes would know it was a trap and walk all around it. It's a wonderful thing, that sense of smell in animals, if it is a sense of smell. Joe here has got a good bit of it."

"What kind of traps were they, father?" asked Mr. Harry.

"Cruel ones steel ones. They'd catch an animal by the leg and sometimes break the bone. The leg would bleed, and below the jaws of the trap it would freeze, there being no circulation of the blood. Those steel traps are an abomination. The people around here use one made on the same principle for catching rats. I wouldn't have them on my place for any money. I believe we've got to give an account for all the unnecessary suffering we put on animals."

"You'll have some to answer for, John, according to your own story," said Mrs. Wood.

"I have suffered already," he said. "Many a night I've lain on my bed and groaned, when I thought of needless cruelties I'd put upon animals when I was a young, unthinking boy and I was pretty carefully brought up, too, according to our light in those days. I often think that if I was cruel, with all the instruction I had to be merciful, what can be expected of the children that get no good teaching at all when they're young."

"Tell us some more about the foxes, Mr. Wood," said Mr. Maxwell.

"Well, we used to have rare sport hunting them with fox-hounds. I'd often go off for the day with my hounds. Sometimes in the early morning they'd find a track in the snow. The leader for scent would go back and forth, to find out which way the fox was going. I can see him now. All the time that he ran, now one way and now another on the track of the fox, he was silent, but kept his tail aloft, wagging it as a signal to the hounds behind. He was leader in scent, but he did not like bloody, dangerous fights. By-and-by, he would decide which way the fox had gone. Then his tail, still kept high in the air, would wag more violently. The rest followed him in single file, going pretty slow, so as to enable us to keep up to them. By-and-by, they would come to a place where the fox was sleeping for the day. As soon as he was disturbed he would leave his bed under some thick fir or spruce branches near the ground. This flung his fresh scent into the air. As soon as the hounds sniffed it, they gave tongue in good earnest. It was a mixed, deep baying, that made the blood quicken in my veins. While in the excitement of first fright, the fox would run fast for a mile or two, till he found it an easy matter to keep out of the way of the hounds. Then he, cunning creature, would begin to bother them. He would mount to the top pole of the worm fence dividing the fields from the woods. He could trot along here quite a distance and then make a long jump into the woods. The hounds would come up, but could not walk the fence, and they would have difficulty in finding where the fox had left it. Then we saw generalship. The hounds scattered in all directions, and made long detours into the woods and fields. As soon as the track was lost, they ceased to bay, but the instant a hound found it again, he bayed to give the signal to the others. All would hurry to the spot, and off they would go baying as they went.

"Then Mr. Fox would try a new trick. He would climb a leaning tree, and then jump to the ground. This trick would soon be found out. Then he'd try another. He would make a circle of a quarter of a mile in circumference. By making a loop in his course, he would come in behind the hounds, and puzzle them between the scent of his first and following tracks. If the snow was deep, the hounds had made a good track for him. Over this he could run easily, and they would have to feel their way along, for after he had gone around the circle a few times, he would jump from the beaten path as far as he could, and make off to other cover in a straight line. Before this was done it was my plan to get near the circle; taking care to approach it on the leeward side. If the fox got a sniff of human scent, he would leave his circle very quickly, and make tracks fast to be out of danger. By the baying of the hounds, the circle in which the race was kept up could be easily known. The last runs to get near enough to shoot had to be done when the hounds' baying came from the side of the circle nearest to me. For then the fox would be on the opposite side farthest away. As soon as I got near enough to see the hounds when they passed, I stopped. When they got on the opposite side, I then kept a bright lookout for the fox. Sometimes when the brush was thick, the sight of him would be indistinct. The shooting had to be quick. As soon as the report of the gun was heard, the hounds ceased to bay, and made for the spot. If the fox was dead, they enjoyed the scent of his blood. If only wounded, they went after him with all speed. Sometimes he was overtaken and killed, and sometimes he got into his burrow in the earth, or in a hollow log, or among the rocks.

"One day, I remember, when I was standing on the outside of the circle, the fox came in sight. I fired. He gave a shrill bark, and came toward me. Then he stopped in the snow and fell dead in his tracks. I was a pretty good shot in those days."

"Poor little fox," said Miss Laura. "I wish you had let him get away."

"Here's one that nearly got away," said Mr. Wood. "One winter's day, I was chasing him with the hounds. There was a crust on the snow, and the fox was light, while the dogs were heavy. They ran along, the fox trotting nimbly on the top of the crust and the dogs breaking through, and every few minutes that fox would stop and sit down to look at the dogs. They were in a fury, and the wickedness of the fox in teasing them, made me laugh so much that I was very unwilling to shoot him."

"You said your steel traps were cruel things, uncle," said Miss Laura. "Why didn't you have a deadfall for the foxes as you had for the bears?"

"They were too cunning to go into deadfalls. There was a better way to catch them, though. Foxes hate water, and never go into it unless they are obliged to, so we used to find a place where a tree had fallen across a river, and made a bridge for them to go back and forth on. Here we set snares, with spring poles that would throw them into the river when they made struggles to get free, and drown them. Did you ever hear of the fox, Laura, that wanted to cross a river, and lay down on the bank pretending that he was dead, and a countryman came along, and, thinking he had a prize, threw him in his boat and rowed across, when the fox got up and ran away?"

"Now, uncle," said Miss Laura, "you're laughing at me. That couldn't be true."

"No, no," said Mr. Wood, chuckling; "but they're mighty cute at pretending they're dead. I once shot one in the morning, carried him a long way on my shoulders, and started to skin him in the afternoon, when he turned around and bit me enough to draw blood. At another time I dug one out of a hole in the ground. He feigned death. I took him up and threw him down at some distance, and he jumped up and ran into the woods."

"What other animals did you catch when you were a boy?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

"Oh, a number. Otters and beavers we caught them in deadfalls and in steel traps. The mink we usually took in deadfalls, smaller, of course, than the ones we used for the bears. The musk-rat we caught in box traps like a mouse trap. The wild-cat we ran down like the loup cervier "

"What kind of an animal is that?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

"It is a lynx, belonging to the cat species. They used to prowl about the country killing hens, geese, and sometimes sheep. They'd fix their tusks in the sheep's neck and suck the blood. They did not think much of the sheep's flesh. We ran them down with dogs. They'd often run up trees, and we'd shoot them. Then there were rabbits that we caught, mostly in snares. For musk-rats, we'd put a parsnip or an apple on the spindle of a box trap. When we snared a rabbit, I always wanted to find it caught around the neck and strangled to death. If they got half through the snare and were caught around the body, or by the hind legs, they'd live for some time, and they'd cry just like a child. I like shooting them better, just because I hated to hear their pitiful cries. It's a bad business this of killing dumb creatures, and the older I get, the more chicken- hearted I am about it."

"Chicken-hearted I should think you are," said Mrs. Wood. "Do you know, Laura, he won't even kill a fowl for dinner. He gives it to one of the men to do."

"'Blessed are the merciful,'" said Miss Laura, throwing her arm over her uncle's shoulder. "I love you, dear Uncle John, because you are so kind to every living thing."

"I'm going to be kind to you now," said her uncle, "and send you to bed. You look tired."

"Very well," she said, with a smile. Then bidding them all good-night, she went upstairs. Mr. Wood turned to Mr. Maxwell. "You're going to stay all night with us, aren't you?"

"So Mrs. Wood says," replied the young man, with a smile.

"Of course," she said. "I couldn't think of letting you go back to the village such a night as this. It's raining cats and dogs but I mustn't say that, or there'll be no getting you to stay. I'll go and prepare your old room next to Harry's." And she bustled away.

The two young men went to the pantry for doughnuts and milk, and Mr. Wood stood gazing down at me. "Good dog," he said; "you look as if you sensed that talk to- night. Come, get a bone, and then away to bed."

He gave me a very large mutton bone, and I held it in my mouth, and watched him opening the woodshed door. I love human beings; and the saddest time of day for me is when I have to be separated from them while they sleep.

"Now, go to bed and rest well, Beautiful Joe," said Mr. Wood, "and if you hear any stranger round the house, run out and bark. Don't be chasing wild animals in your sleep, though. They say a dog is the only animal that dreams. I wonder whether it's true?" Then he went into the house and shut the door.

I had a sheepskin to lie on, and a very good bed it made. I slept soundly for a long time; then I waked up and found that, instead of rain pattering against the roof, and darkness everywhere, it was quite light. The rain was over, and the moon was shining beautifully. I ran to the door and looked out. It was almost as light as day. The moon made it very bright all around the house and farm buildings, and I could look all about and see that there was no one stirring. I took a turn around the yard, and walked around to the side of the house, to glance up at Miss Laura's window. I always did this several times through the night, just to see if she was quite safe. I was on my way back to my bed, when I saw two small, white things moving away down the lane. I stood on the veranda and watched them. When they got nearer, I saw that there was a white rabbit hopping up the road, followed by a white hen.

It seemed to me a very strange thing for these creatures to be out this time of night, and why were they coming to Dingley Farm? This wasn't their home. I ran down on the road and stood in front of them.

Just as soon as the hen saw me, she fluttered in front of the rabbit, and, spreading out her wings, clucked angrily, and acted as if she would peck my eyes out if I came nearer.

I saw that they were harmless creatures, and, remembering my adventure with the snake, I stepped aside. Besides that, I knew by their smell that they had been near Mr. Maxwell, so perhaps they were after him.

They understood quite well that I would not hurt them, and passed by me. The rabbit went ahead again and the hen fell behind. It seemed to me that the hen was sleepy, and didn't like to be out so late at night, and was only following the rabbit because she thought it was her duty.

He was going along in a very queer fashion, putting his nose to the ground, and rising up on his hind legs, and sniffing the air, first on this side and then on the other, and his nose going, going all the time.

He smelled all around the house till he came to Mr. Maxwell's room at the back. It opened on the veranda by a glass door, and the door stood ajar. The rabbit squeezed himself in, and the hen stayed out. She watched for a while, and when he didn't come back, she flew upon the back of a chair that stood near the door, and put her head under her wing.

I went back to my bed, for I knew they would do no harm. Early in the morning, when I was walking around the house, I heard a great shouting and laughing from Mr. Maxwell's room. He and Mr. Harry had just discovered the hen and the rabbit; and Mr. Harry was calling his mother to come and look at them. The rabbit had slept on the foot of the bed.

Mr. Harry was chaffing Mr. Maxwell very much, and was telling him that any one who entertained him was in for a traveling menagerie. They had a great deal of fun over it, and Mr. Maxwell said that he had had that pretty, white hen as a pet for a long time in Boston. Once when she had some little chickens, a frightened rabbit, that was being chased by a dog, ran into the yard. In his terror he got right under the hen's wings, and she sheltered him, and pecked at the dog's eyes, and kept him off till help came. The rabbit belonged to a neighbor's boy, and Mr. Maxwell bought it from him. From the day the hen protected him, she became his friend, and followed him everywhere.

I did not wonder that the rabbit wanted to see his master. There was something about that young man that made dumb animals just delight in him. When Mrs. Wood mentioned this to him be said, "I don't know why they should I don't do anything to fascinate them."

"You love them," she said, "and they know it. That is the reason."

CHAPTER XXV A HAPPY HORSE

FOR a good while after I went to Dingley Farm I was very shy of the horses, for I was afraid they might kick me, thinking that I was a bad dog like Bruno. However, they all had such good faces, and looked at me so kindly, that I was beginning to get over my fear of them.

Fleetfoot, Mr. Harry's colt, was my favorite, and one afternoon, when Mr. Harry and Miss Laura were going out to see him, I followed them. Fleetfoot was amusing himself by rolling over and over on the grass under a tree, but when he saw Mr. Harry, he gave a shrill whinny, and running to him, began nosing about his pockets.

"Wait a bit," said Mr. Harry, holding him by the forelock. "Let me introduce you to this young lady, Miss Laura Morris. I want you to make her a bow." He gave the colt some sign, and immediately he began to paw the ground and shake his head.

Mr. Harry laughed and went on: "Here is her dog Joe. I want you to like him, too. Come here, Joe." I was not at all afraid, for I knew Mr. Harry would not let him hurt me, so I stood in front of him, and for the first time had a good look at him. They called him the colt, but he was really a full-grown horse, and had already been put to work. He was of a dark chestnut color, and had a well- shaped body and a long, handsome head, and I never saw, in the head of a man or beast, a more beautiful pair of eyes than that colt had large, full, brown eyes they were that he turned on me almost as a person would. He looked me all over as if to say: "Are you a good dog, and will you treat me kindly, or are you a bad one like Bruno, and will you chase me and snap at my heels and worry me, so that I shall want to kick you?"

I looked at him very earnestly and wagged my body, and lifted myself on my hind legs toward him. He seemed pleased and put down his nose to sniff at me, and then we were friends. Friends, and such good friends, for next to Jim and Billy, I have loved Fleetfoot.

Mr. Harry pulled some lumps of sugar out of his pocket, and giving them to Miss Laura, told her to put them on the palm of her hand and hold it out flat toward Fleetfoot. The colt ate the sugar, and all the time eyed her with his quiet, observing glance, that made her exclaim: "What wise-looking colt!"

"He is like an old horse," said Mr. Harry, "When he hears a sudden noise, he stops and looks all about him to find an explanation."

"He has been well trained," said Miss Laura.

"I have brought him up carefully," said Mr. Harry. "Really, he has been treated more like a dog than a colt. He follows me about the farm and smells everything I handle, and seems to want to know the reason of things."

"Your mother says," replied Miss Laura, "that she found you both asleep on the lawn one day last summer, and the colt's head was on your arm."

Mr. Harry smiled and threw his arm over the colt's neck. "We've been comrades, haven't we, Fleetfoot? I've been almost ashamed of his devotion. He has followed me to the village, and he always wants to go fishing with me. He's four years old now, so he ought to get over those coltish ways. I've driven him a good deal. We're going out in the buggy this afternoon, will you come?"

"Where are you going?" asked Miss Laura.

"Just for a short drive back of the river, to collect some money for father. I'll be home long before tea time."

"Yes, I should like to go," said Miss Laura "I shall go to the house and get my other hat."

"Come on, Fleetfoot," said Mr. Harry. And he led the way from the pasture, the colt following behind with me. I waited about the veranda, and in a short time Mr. Harry drove up to the front door. The buggy was black and shining, and Fleetfoot had on a silver-mounted harness that made him look very fine. He stood gently switching his long tail to keep the flies away, and with his head turned to see who was going to get into the buggy. I stood by him, and as soon as he saw that Miss Laura and Mr. Harry had seated themselves, he acted as if he wanted to be off. Mr. Harry spoke to him and away he went, I racing down the lane by his side, so happy to think he was my friend. He liked having me beside him, and every few seconds put down his head toward me. Animals can tell each other things without saying a word. When Fleetfoot gave his head a little toss in a certain way, I knew that he wanted to have a race. He had a beautiful even gait, and went very swiftly. Mr. Harry kept speaking to him to check him.

"You don't like him to go too fast, do you?" said Miss Laura.

"No," he returned. "I think we could make a racer of him if we liked, but father and I don't go in for fast horses. There is too much said about fast trotters and race horses. On some of the farms around here, the people have gone mad on breeding fast horses. An old farmer out in the country had a common cart-horse that he suddenly found out had great powers of speed and endurance. He sold him to a speculator for a big price, and it has set everybody wild. If the people who give all their time to it can't raise fast horses I don't see how the farmers can. A fast horse on a farm is ruination to the boys, for it starts them racing and betting. Father says he is going to offer a prize for the fastest walker that can be bred in New Hampshire. That Dutchman of ours, heavy as he is, is a fair walker, and Cleve and Pacer can each walk four and a half miles an hour."

"Why do you lay such stress on their walking fast?" asked Miss Laura.

"Because so much of the farm work must be done at a walk. Ploughing, teaming, and drawing produce to market, and going up and down hills. Even for the cities it is good to have fast walkers. Trotting on city pavements is very hard on the dray horses. If they are allowed to go at a quick walk, their legs will keep strong much longer. It is shameful the way horses are used up in big cities. Our pavements are so bad that cab horses are used up in three years. In many ways we are a great deal better off in this new country than the people in Europe, but we are not in respect of cab horses, for in London and Paris they last for five years. I have seen horses drop down dead in New York just from hard usage. Poor brutes, there is a better time coming for them though. When electricity is more fully developed we'll see some wonderful changes. As it is, last year in different places, about thirty thousand horses were released from those abominable horse cars, by having electricity introduced on the roads. Well, Fleetfoot, do you want another spin? All right, my boy, go ahead."

Away we went again along a bit of level road. Fleetfoot had no check-rein on his beautiful neck, and when he trotted, he could hold his head in an easy, natural position. With his wonderful eyes and flowing mane and tail, and his glossy, reddish-brown body, I thought that he was the handsomest horse I had ever seen. He loved to go fast, and when Mr. Harry spoke to him to slow up again, he tossed his head with impatience. But he was too sweet-tempered to disobey. In all the years that I have known Fleetfoot, I have never once seen him refuse to do as his master told him.

"You have forgotten your whip, haven't you Harry?" I heard Miss Laura say, as we jogged slowly along, and I ran by the buggy panting and with my tongue hanging out.

"I never use one," said Mr. Harry; "if I saw any man lay one on Fleetfoot, I'd knock him down." His voice was so severe that I glanced up into the buggy. He looked just as he did the day that he stretched Jenkins on the ground, and gave him a beating.

"I am so glad you don't," said Miss Laura. "You are like the Russians. Many of them control their horses by their voices, and call them such pretty names. But you have to use a whip for some horses, don't you, Cousin Harry?"

"Yes, Laura. There are many vicious horses that can't be controlled otherwise, and then with many horses one requires a whip in case of necessity for urging them forward."

"I suppose Fleetfoot never balks," said Miss Laura.

"No," replied Mr. Harry; "Dutchman sometimes does, and we have two cures for him, both equally good. We take up a forefoot and strike his shoe two or three times with a stone. The operation always interests him greatly, and he usually starts. If he doesn't go for that, we pass a line round his forelegs, at the knee joint, then go in front of him and draw on the line. Father won't let the men use a whip, unless they are driven to it."

"Fleetfoot has had a happy life, hasn't he?" said Miss Laura, looking admiringly at him "How did he get to like you so much, Harry?"

"I broke him in after a fashion of my own. Father gave him to me, and the first time I saw him on his feet, I went up carefully and put my hand on him. His mother was rather shy of me, for we hadn't had her long, and it made him shy too, so I soon left him. The next time I stroked him; the next time I put my arm around him. Soon he acted like a big dog. I could lead him about by a strap, and I made a little halter and a bridle for him. I didn't see why I shouldn't train him a little while he was young and manageable. I think it is cruel to let colts run till one has to employ severity in mastering them. Of course, I did not let him do much work. Colts are like boys a boy shouldn't do a man's work, but he had exercise every day, and I trained him to draw a light cart behind him. I used to do all kinds of things to accustom him to unusual sounds. Father talked a good deal to me about Rarey, the great horse-tamer, and it put ideas into my head. He said he once saw Rarey come on a stage in Boston with a timid horse that he was going to accustom to a loud noise. First a bugle was blown, then some louder instrument, and so on, till there was a whole brass band going. Rarey reassured the animal, and it was not afraid."

"That's a capital story, we must have it at the Band of Mercy," said Mr. Maxwell. Mrs. Wood had gone to help prepare the tea, so the two young men were alone with Miss Laura. When they had done talking about me, she asked Mr. Harry a number of questions about his college life, and his trip to New York, for he had not been studying all the time that he was away.

"What are you going to do with yourself, Gray, when your college course is ended?" asked Mr. Maxwell.

"I am going to settle right down here," said Mr. Harry.

"What, be a farmer?" asked his friend.

"Yes; why not?"

"Nothing, only I imagined that you would take a profession."

"The professions are overstocked, and we have not farmers enough for the good of the country. There is nothing like farming, to my mind. In no other employment have you a surer living. I do not like the cities. The heat and dust, and crowds of people, and buildings overtopping one another, and the rush of living, take my breath away. Suppose I did go to a city. I would sell out my share of the farm, and have a few thousand dollars. You know I am not an intellectual giant. I would never distinguish myself in any profession. I would be a poor lawyer or doctor, living in a back street all the days of my life, and never watch a tree or flower grow, or tend an animal, or have a drive unless I paid for it. No, thank you. I agree with President Eliot, of Harvard. He says scarcely one person in ten thousand betters himself permanently by leaving his rural home and settling in a city. If one is a millionaire, city life is agreeable enough, for one can always get away from it; but I am beginning to think that it is a dangerous thing, in more ways than one, to be a millionaire. I believe the safety of the country lies in the hands of the farmers; for they are seldom very poor or very rich. We stand between the two dangerous classes the wealthy and the paupers."

"But most farmers lead such a dog's life," said Mr. Maxwell.

"So they do; farming isn't made one-half as attractive as it should be," said Mr. Harry.

Mr. Maxwell smiled. "Attractive farming. Just sketch an outline of that, will you, Gray?"

"In the first place," said Mr. Harry, "I would like to tear out of the heart of the farmer the thing that is as firmly implanted in him as it is in the heart of his city brother the thing that is doing more to harm our nation than anything else under the sun."

"What is that?" asked Mr. Maxwell, curiously.

"The thirst for gold. The farmer wants to get rich, and he works so hard to do it that he wears himself out soul and body, and the young people around him get so disgusted with that way of getting rich, that they go off to the cities to find out some other way, or at least to enjoy themselves, for I don't think many young people are animated by a desire to heap up money."

Mr. Maxwell looked amused. "There is certainly a great exodus from country places cityward," he said. "What would be your plan for checking it?"

"I would make the farm so pleasant, that you couldn't hire the boys and girls to leave it. I would have them work, and work hard, too, but when their work was over, I would let them have some fun. That is what they go to the city for. They want amusement and society, and to get into some kind of a crowd when their work is done. The young men and young women want to get together, as is only natural. Now that could be done in the country. If farmers would be contented with smaller profits and smaller farms, their houses could be nearer together. Their children would have opportunities of social intercourse, there could be societies and clubs, and that would tend to a distribution of literature. A farmer ought to take five or six papers and two or three magazines. He would find it would pay him in the long run, and there ought to be a law made, compelling him to go to the post office once a day."

Mr. Maxwell burst out laughing. "And another to make him mend his roads as well as mend his ways. I tell you Gray, the bad roads would put an end to all these fine schemes of yours. Imagine farmers calling on each other on a dark evening after a spring freshet. I can see them mired and bogged, and the house a mile ahead of them."

"That is true," said Mr. Harry, "the road question is a serious one. Do you know how father and I settle it?"

"No," said Mr. Maxwell.

"We got so tired of the whole business, and the farmers around here spent so much time in discussing the art of roadmaking, as to whether it should be viewed from the engineering point of view, or the farmers' practical point of view, and whether we would require this number of stump extractors or that number, and how many shovels and crushers and ditchers would be necessary to keep our roads in order, and so on, that we simply withdrew. We keep our own roads in order. Once a year, father gets a gang of men and tackles every section of the road that borders upon our land, and our roads are the best around here. I wish the government would take up this matter of making roads and settle it. If we had good, smooth, country roads, such as they have in some parts of Europe, we would be able to travel comfortably over them all through the year, and our draught animals would last longer, for they would not have to expend so much energy in drawing their loads."

CHAPTER XXII WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TEA TABLE

FROM my station under Miss Laura's chair, I could see that all the time Mr. Harry was speaking, Mr. Maxwell, although he spoke rather as if he was laughing at him, was yet glancing at him admiringly.

When Mr. Harry was silent, he exclaimed, "You are right, you are right, Gray. With your smooth highways, and plenty of schools, and churches, and libraries, and meetings for young people, you would make country life a paradise, and I tell you what you would do, too; you would empty the slums of the cities. It is the slowness and dullness of country life, and not their poverty alone, that keep the poor in dirty lanes and tenement houses. They want stir and amusement, too, poor souls, when their day's work is over. I believe they would come to the country if it were made more pleasant for them."

"That is another question," said Mr. Harry, "a burning question in my mind the labor and capital one. When I was in New York, Maxwell, I was in a hospital, and saw a number of men who had been day laborers. Some of them were old and feeble, and others were young men, broken down in the prime of life. Their limbs were shrunken and drawn. They had been digging in the earth, and working on high buildings, and confined in dingy basements, and had done all kinds of hard labor for other men. They had given their lives and strength for others, and this was the end of it to die poor and forsaken. I looked at them, and they reminded me of the martyrs of old. Ground down, living from hand to mouth, separated from their families in many cases they had had a bitter lot. They had never had a chance to get away from their fate, and had to work till they dropped. I tell you there is something wrong. We don't do enough for the people that slave and toil for us. We should take better care of them, we should not herd them together like cattle, and when we get rich, we should carry them along with us, and give them a part of our gains, for without them we would be as poor as they are."

"Good, Harry I'm with you there," said voice behind him, and looking around, we saw Mr. Wood standing in the doorway, gazing down proudly at his step-son.

Mr. Harry smiled, and getting up, said, "Won't you have my chair, sir?"

"No, thank you; your mother wishes us to come to tea. There are muffins, and you know they won't improve with keeping."

They all went to the dining-room, and I followed them. On the way, Mr. Wood said, "Right on top of that talk of yours, Harry, I've got to tell you of another person who is going to Boston to live."

"Who is it?" said Mr. Harry.

"Lazy Dan Wilson. I've been to see him this afternoon. You know his wife is sick, and they're half starved. He says he is going to the city, for he hates to chop wood and work, and he thinks maybe he'll get some light job there."

Mr. Harry looked grave, and Mr. Maxwell said, "He will starve, that's what he will do."

"Precisely," said Mr. Wood, spreading out his hard, brown hands, as he sat down at the table. "I don't know why it is, but the present generation has a marvelous way of skimming around any kind of work with their hands. They'll work their brains till they haven't got any more backbone than a caterpillar, but as for manual labor, it's old-timey and out of fashion. I wonder how these farms would ever have been carved out of the backwoods, if the old Puritans had sat down on the rocks with their noses in a lot of books, and tried to figure out just how little work they could do, and yet exist."

"Now, father," said Mrs. Wood, "you are trying to insinuate that the present generation is lazy, and I'm sure it isn't. Look at Harry. He works as hard as you do."

"Isn't that like a woman?" said Mr. Wood, with a good-natured laugh. "The present generation consists of her son, and the past of her husband. I don't think all our young people are lazy, Hattie; but how in creation, unless the Lord rains down a few farmers, are we going to support all our young lawyers and doctors? They say the world is getting healthier and better, but we've got to fight a little more, and raise some more criminals, and we've got to take to eating pies and doughnuts for breakfast again, or some of our young sprouts from the colleges will go a begging."

"You don't mean to undervalue the advantages of a good education, do you, Mr. Wood?" said Mr. Maxwell.

"No, no; look at Harry there. Isn't he pegging away at his studies with my hearty approval? and he's going to be nothing but a plain, common farmer. But he'll be a better one than I've been though, because he's got a trained mind. I found that out when he was a lad going to the village school. He'd lay out his little garden by geometry, and dig his ditches by algebra. Education's a help to any man. What I am trying to get at is this, that in some way or other we're running more to brains and less to hard work than our forefathers did."

Mr. Wood was beating on the table with his forefinger while he talked, and every one was laughing at him. "When you've quite finished speechifying, John," said Mrs. Wood, "perhaps you'll serve the berries and pass the cream and sugar Do you get yellow cream like this in the village, Mr. Maxwell?"

"No, Mrs. Wood," he said; "ours is a much paler yellow," and then there was a great tinkling of china, and passing of dishes, and talking and laughing, and no one noticed that I was not in my usual place in the hall. I could not get over my dread of the green creature, and I had crept under the table, so that if it came out and frightened Miss Laura, I could jump up and catch it.

When tea was half over, she gave a little cry. I sprang up on her lap, and there, gliding over the table toward her, was the wicked-looking green thing. I stepped on the table, and had it by the middle before it could get to her. My hind legs were in a dish of jelly, and my front ones were in a plate of cake, and I was very uncomfortable. The tail of the green thing hung in a milk pitcher, and its tongue was still going at me, but I held it firmly and stood quite still.

"Drop it, drop it!" cried Miss Laura, in tones of distress, and Mr. Maxwell struck me on the back, so I let the thing go, and stood sheepishly looking about me. Mr. Wood was leaning back in his chair, laughing with all his might, and Mrs. Wood was staring at her untidy table with rather a long face. Miss Laura told me to jump on the floor, and then she helped her aunt to take the spoiled things off the table.

I felt that I had done wrong, so I slunk out into the hall. Mr. Maxwell was sitting on the lounge, tearing his handkerchief in strips and tying them around the creature where my teeth had stuck in. I had been careful not to hurt it much, for I knew it was a pet of his; but he did not know that, and scowled at me, saying: "You rascal; you've hurt my poor snake terribly."

I felt so badly to hear this that I went and stood with my head in a corner. I had almost rather be whipped than scolded. After a while, Mr. Maxwell went back into the room, and they all went on with their tea. I could hear Mr. Wood's loud, cheery voice, "The dog did quite right. A snake is mostly a poisonous creature, and his instinct told him to protect his mistress. Where is he? Joe, Joe!"

I would not move till Miss Laura came and spoke to me. "Dear old dog," she whispered, "you knew the snake was there all the time, didn't you?" Her words made me feel better, and I followed her to the dining room, where Mr. Wood made me sit beside him and eat scraps from his hand all through the meal.

Mr. Maxwell had got over his ill humor, and was chatting in a lively way. "Good Joe," he said, "I was cross to you, and I beg your pardon It always riles me to have any of my pets injured. You didn't know my poor snake was only after something to eat. Mrs. Wood has pinned him in my pocket so he won't come out again. Do you know where I got that snake, Mrs. Wood?"

"No," she said; "you never told me."

"It was across the river by Blue Ridge," he said. "One day last summer I was out rowing, and, getting very hot, tied my boat in the shade of a big tree. Some village boys were in the woods, and, hearing a great noise, I went to see what it was all about. They were Band of Mercy boys, and finding a country boy beating a snake to death, they were remonstrating with him for his cruelty, telling him that some kinds of snakes were a help to the farmer, and destroyed large numbers of field mice and other vermin. The boy was obstinate. He had found the snake, and he insisted upon his right to kill it, and they were having rather a lively time when I appeared. I persuaded them to make the snake over to me. Apparently it was already dead. Thinking it might revive, I put it on some grass in the bow of the boat. It lay there motionless for a long time, and I picked up my oars and started for home. I had got half way across the river, when I turned around and saw that the snake was gone. It had just dropped into the water, and was swimming toward the bank we had left. I turned and followed it.

"It swam slowly and with evident pain, lifting its head every few seconds high above the water, to see which way it was going. On reaching the bank it coiled itself up, throwing up blood and water. I took it up carefully, carried it home, and nursed it. It soon got better, and has been a pet of mine ever since."

After tea was over, and Mrs. Wood and Miss Laura had helped Adele finish the work, they all gathered in the parlor. The day had been quite warm, but now a cool wind had sprung up, and Mr. Wood said that it was blowing up rain.

Mrs. Wood said that she thought a fire would be pleasant; so they lighted the sticks of wood in the open grate, and all sat round the blazing fire.

Mr. Maxwell tried to get me to make friends with the little snake that he held in his hands toward the blaze, and now that I knew that it was harmless I was not afraid of it; but it did not like me, and put out its funny little tongue whenever I looked at it.

By-and-by the rain began to strike against the windows, and Mr. Maxwell said, "This is just the night for a story. Tell us something out of your experience, won't you, Mr. Wood?"

"What shall I tell you?" he said, good-humoredly. He was sitting between his wife and Mr. Harry, and had his hand on Mr. Harry's knee.

"Something about animals," said Mr. Maxwell. "We seem to be on that subject to- day."

"Well," said Mr. Wood, "I'll talk about something that has been running in my head for many a day. There is a good deal of talk nowadays about kindness to domestic animals; but I do not hear much about kindness to wild ones. The same Creator formed them both. I do not see why you should not protect one as well as the other. I have no more right to torture a bear than a cow. Our wild animals around here are getting pretty well killed off, but there are lots in other places. I used to be fond of hunting when I was a boy; but I have got rather disgusted with killing these late years, and unless the wild creatures ran in our streets, I would lift no hand to them. Shall I tell you some of the sport we had when I was youngster?"

"Yes, yes!" they all exclaimed.

CHAPTER XXIII TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS

"WELL Mr. Wood began: "I was brought up, as you all know, in the eastern part of Maine, and we often used to go over into New Brunswick for our sport. Moose were our best game. Did you ever see one, Laura?"

"No, uncle," she said.

"Well, when I was a boy there was no more beautiful sight to me in the world than a moose with his dusky hide, and long legs, and branching antlers, and shoulders standing higher than a horse's. Their legs are so long that they can't eat close to the ground. They browse on the tops of plants, and the tender shoots and leaves of trees. They walk among the thick underbrush, carrying their horns adroitly to prevent their catching in the branches, and they step so well, and aim so true, that you'll scarcely hear a twig fall as they go.

"They're a timid creature except at times. Then they'll attack with hoofs and antlers whatever comes in their way. They hate mosquitoes, and when they're tormented by them it's just as well to be careful about approaching them. Like all other creatures, the Lord has put into them a wonderful amount of sense, and when a female moose has her one or two fawns she goes into the deepest part of the forest, or swims to islands in large lakes, till they are able to look out for themselves.

"Well, we used to like to catch a moose, and we had different ways of doing it. One way was to snare them. We'd make a loop in a rope and hide it on the ground under the dead leaves in one of their paths. This was connected with a young sapling whose top was bent down. When the moose stepped on the loop it would release the sapling, and up it would bound, catching him by the leg. These snares were always set deep in the woods, and we couldn't visit them very often; Sometimes the moose would be there for days, raging and tearing around, and scratching the skin off his legs. That was cruel. I wouldn't catch a moose in that way now for a hundred dollars.

"Another way was to hunt them on snow shoes with dogs. In February and March the snow was deep, and would carry men and dogs. Moose don't go together in herds. In the summer they wander about over the forest, and in the autumn they come together in small groups, and select a hundred or two of acres where there is plenty of heavy undergrowth, and to which they usually confine themselves. They do this so that their tracks won't tell their enemies where they are.

"Any of these places where there were several moose we called a moose yard. We went through the woods till we got on to the tracks of some of the animals belonging to it, then the dogs smelled them and went ahead to start them. If I shut my eyes now I can see one of our moose hunts. The moose running and plunging through the snow crust, and occasionally rising up and striking at the dogs that hang on to his bleeding flanks and legs. The hunters' rifles going crack, crack, crack, sometimes killing or wounding dogs as well as moose. That, too, was cruel.

"Two other ways we had of hunting moose: Calling and stalking. The calling was done in this way: We took a bit of birch bark and rolled it up in the shape of a horn. We took this horn and started out, either on a bright moonlight night, or just at evening, or early in the morning. The man who carried the horn hid himself, and then began to make a lowing sound like a female moose. He had to do it pretty well to deceive them. Away in the distance some moose would hear it, and with answering grunts would start off to come to it. If a young male moose was coming, he'd mind his steps, I can assure you, on account of fear of the old ones; but if it was an old fellow, you'd hear him stepping out bravely and rapping his horns against the trees, and plunging into any water that came in his way. When he got pretty near, he'd stop to listen, and then the caller had to be very careful and put his trumpet down close to the ground, so as to make a lower sound. If the moose felt doubtful he'd turn; if not, he'd come on, and unlucky for him if he did, for he got a warm reception, either from the rifles in our hands as we lay hid near the caller, or from some of the party stationed at a distance.

"In stalking, we crept on them the way a cat creeps on a mouse. In the daytime a moose is usually lying down. We'd find their tracks and places where they'd been nipping off the ends of branches and twigs, and follow them up. They easily take the scent of men, and we'd have to keep well to the leeward. Sometimes we'd come upon them lying down, but, if in walking along, we'd broken a twig, or made the slightest noise, they'd think it was one of their mortal enemies, a bear creeping on them, and they'd be up and away. Their sense of hearing is very keen, but they're not so quick to see. A fox is like that, too. His eyes aren't equal to his nose.

"Stalking is the most merciful way to kill moose. Then they haven't the fright and suffering of the chase."

"I don't see why they need to be killed at all," said Mrs. Wood. "If I knew that forest back of the mountains was full of wild creatures, I think I'd be glad of it, and not want to hunt them, that is, if they were harmless and beautiful creatures like the deer."

"You're a woman," said Mr. Wood, "and women are more merciful than men. Men want to kill and slay. They're like the Englishman, who said 'What a fine day it is; let's go out and kill something.'"

"Please tell us some more about the dogs that helped you catch the moose, uncle," said Miss Laura. I was sitting up very straight beside her listening to every word Mr. Wood said, and she was fondling my head.

"Well, Laura, when we camped out on the snow and slept on spruce boughs while we were after the moose, the dogs used to be a great comfort to us. They slept at our feet and kept us warm. Poor brutes, they mostly had a rough time of it. They enjoyed the running and chasing as much as we did, but when it came to broken ribs and sore heads, it was another matter. Then the porcupines bothered them. Our dogs would never learn to let them alone. If they were going through the woods where there were no signs of moose and found a porcupine, they'd kill it. The quills would get in their mouths and necks and chests, and we'd have to gag them and take bullet molds or nippers, or whatever we had, sometimes our jack- knives, and pull out the nasty things. If we got hold of the dogs at once, we could pull out the quills with our fingers. Sometimes the quills worked in, and the dogs would go home and lie by the fire with running sores till they worked out. I've seen quills work right through dogs. Go in on one side and come out on the other."

"Poor brutes," said Mrs. Wood. "I wonder you took them."

"We once lost a valuable hound while moose hunting," said Mr. Wood. "The moose struck him with his hoof and the dog was terribly injured. He lay in the woods for days, till a neighbor of ours, who was looking for timber, found him and brought him home on his shoulders. Wasn't there rejoicing among us boys to see old Lion coming back. We took care of him and he got well again.

"It was good sport to see the dogs when we were hunting a bear with them. Bears are good runners, and when dogs get after them, there is great skirmishing. They nip the bear behind, and when they turn, the dogs run like mad, for a hug from a bear means sure death to a dog. If they got a slap from his paws, over they'd go. Dogs new to the business were often killed by the bears."

"Were there many bears near your home, Mr. Wood?" asked Mr. Maxwell

"Lots of them. More than we wanted. They used to bother us fearfully about our sheep and cattle. I've often had to get up in the night, and run out to the cattle. The bears would come out of the woods, and jump on to the young heifers and cows, and strike them and beat them down, and the cattle would roar as if the evil one had them. If the cattle were too far away from the house for us to hear them, the bears would worry them till they were dead.

"As for the sheep, they never made any resistance. They'd meekly run in a corner when they saw a bear coming, and huddle together, and he'd strike at them, and scratch them with his claws, and perhaps wound a dozen before he got one firmly. Then he'd seize it in his paws, and walk off on his hind legs over fences and anything else that came in his way, till he came to a nice, retired spot, and there he'd sit down and skin that sheep just like a butcher. He'd gorge himself with the meat, and in the morning we'd find the other sheep that he'd torn, and we'd vow vengeance against that bear. He'd be almost sure to come back for more, so for a while after that we always put the sheep in the barn at nights and set a trap by the remains of the one he had eaten.

"Everybody hated bears, and hadn't much pity for them; still they were only getting their meat as other wild animals do, and we'd no right to set such cruel traps for them as the steel ones. They had a clog attached to them, and had long, sharp teeth. We put them on the ground and strewed leaves over them, and hung up some of the carcass left by the bear near by. When he attempted to get this meat, he would tread on the trap, and the teeth would spring together, and catch him by the leg. They always fought to get free. I once saw a bear that had been making a desperate effort to get away. His leg was broken, the skin and flesh were all torn away, and he was held by the tendons. It was a foreleg that was caught, and he would put his hind feet against the jaws of the trap, and then draw by pressing with his feet, till he would stretch those tendons to their utmost extent.

"I have known them to work away till they really pulled these tendons out of the foot, and got off. It was a great event in our neighborhood when a bear was caught. Whoever caught him blew a horn, and the men and boys came trooping together to see the sight. I've known them to blow that horn on a Sunday morning, and I've seen the men turn their backs on the meeting house to go and see the bear."

"Was there no more merciful way of catching them than by this trap?" asked Miss Laura.

"Oh, yes, by the deadfall that is by driving heavy sticks into the ground, and making a boxlike place, open on one side, where two logs were so arranged with other heavy logs upon them, that when the bear seized the bait, the upper log fell down and crushed him to death. Another way was to fix a bait in a certain place, with cords tied to it, which cords were fastened to triggers of guns placed at a little distance. When the bear took the bait, the guns went off, and he shot himself.

"Sometimes it took a good many bullets to kill them. I remember one old fellow that we put eleven into, before he keeled over. It was one fall, over on Pike's Hill. The snow had come earlier than usual, and this old bear hadn't got into his den for his winter's sleep. A lot of us started out after him. The hill was covered with beech trees, and he'd been living all the fall on the nuts, till he'd got as fat as butter. We took dogs and worried him, and ran him from one place to another, and shot at him, till at last he dropped. We took his meat home, and had his skin tanned for a sleigh robe.

"It is to be hoped that he would learn a lesson," said the president, "and be kinder to his horse in the future. Now, Bernard Howe, your story."

The boy was a brother to the little girl who had told the monkey story, and he, too, had evidently been talking to his grandfather. He told two stories, and Miss Laura listened eagerly, for they were about Fairport.

The boy said that when his grandfather was young, he lived in Fairport, Maine. On a certain day he stood in the market square to see their first stage-coach put together. It had come from Boston in pieces, for there was no one in Fairport that could make one. The coach went away up into the country one day, and came back the next. For a long time no one understood driving the horses properly, and they came in day after day with the blood streaming from them. The whiffletree would swing round and hit them, and when their collars were taken off, their necks would be raw and bloody. After a time, the men got to understand how to drive a coach, and the horses did not suffer so much.

The other story was about a team-boat, not a steamboat. More than seventy years ago, they had no steamers running between Fairport and the island opposite where people went for the summer, but they had what they called a team-boat, that is, a boat with machinery to make it go, that could be worked by horses. There were eight horses that went around and around, and made the boat go. One afternoon, two dancing masters, who were wicked fellows, that played the fiddle, and never went to church on Sundays, got on the boat, and sat just where the horses had to pass them as they went around.

Every time the horses went by, they jabbed them with their penknives. The man who was driving the horses at last saw the blood dripping from them, and the dancing masters were found out. Some young men on the boat were so angry that they caught up a rope's end, and gave the dancing masters a lashing, and then threw them into the water and made them swim to the island.

When this boy took a seat, a young girl read some verses that she had clipped from a newspaper:

"Don't kill the toads, the ugly toads,

That hop around your door;

Each meal the little toad doth eat A hundred bugs or more.

"He sits around with aspect meek,

Until the bug hath neared,

Then shoots he forth his little tongue

Like lightning double-geared.

"And then he soberly doth wink,

And shut his ugly mug,

And patiently doth wait until

There comes another bug."

Mr. Maxwell told a good dog story after this. He said the president need not have any fears as to its truth, for it had happened in his boarding house in the village, and he had seen it himself. Monday, the day before, being wash-day, his landlady lady had put out a large washing. Among the clothes on the line was a gray flannel shirt belonging to her husband. The young dog belonging to the house had pulled the shirt from the line and torn it to pieces. The woman put it aside and told him master would beat him. When the man came home to his dinner, he showed the dog the pieces of the shirt, and gave him a severe whipping. The dog ran away, visited all the clothes lines in the village, till he found a gray shirt very like his master's. He seized it and ran home, laying it at his master's; feet, joyfully wagging his tail meanwhile

Mr. Maxwell's story done, a bright-faced boy, called Simon Grey, got up and said, "You all know our old gray horse Ned. Last week father sold him to a man in Hoytville, and I went to the station when he was shipped. He was put in a box car. The doors were left a little open to give him air, and were locked in that way. There was a narrow, sliding door, four feet from the floor of the car, and, in some way or other, old Ned pushed this door open, crawled through it, and tumbled out on the ground. When I was coming from school, I saw him walking along the track. He hadn't hurt himself, except for a few cuts. He was glad to see me, and followed me home. He must have gotten off the train when it was going full speed, for he hadn't been seen at any of the stations, and the trainmen were astonished to find the doors locked and the car empty, when they got to Hoytville. Father got the man who bought him to release him from his bargain, for he says if Ned is so fond of Riverdale, he shall stay here."

The president asked the boys and girls to give three cheers for old Ned, and then they had some more singing. After all had taken their seats, he said he would like to know what the members had been doing for animals during the past fortnight.

One girl had kept her brother from shooting two owls that came about their barnyard. She told him that the owls would destroy the rats and mice that bothered him in the barn, but if he hunted them, they would go to the woods.

A boy said that he had persuaded some of his friends who were going fishing, to put their bait worms into a dish of boiling water to kill them before they started, and also to promise him that as soon as they took their fish out of the water, they would kill them by a sharp blow on the back of the head. They were all the more ready to do this, when he told them that their fish would taste better when cooked, if they had been killed as soon as they were taken from the water into the air.

A little girl had gotten her mother to say that she would never again put lobsters into cold water and slowly boil them to death. She had also stopped a man in the street who was carrying a pair of fowls with their heads down, and asked him if he would kindly reverse their position. The man told her that the fowls didn't mind, and she pursed up her small mouth and showed the band how she said to him, "I would prefer the opinion of the hens." Then she said he had laughed at her, and said, "Certainly, little lady," and had gone off carrying them as she wanted him to. She had also reasoned with different boys outside the village who were throwing stones at birds and frogs, and sticking butterflies, and had invited them to come to the Band of Mercy.

This child seemed to have done more than any one else for dumb animals. She had taken around a petition to the village boys, asking them not to search for birds' eggs, and she had even gone into her father's stable, and asked him to hold her up, so that she could look into the horses' mouths to see if their teeth wanted filing or were decayed. When her father laughed at her, she told him that horses often suffer terrible pain from their teeth, and that sometimes a runaway is caused by a metal bit striking against the exposed nerve in the tooth of a horse that has become almost frantic with pain.

She was a very gentle girl, and I think by the way that she spoke that her father loved her dearly, for she told how much trouble he had taken to make some tiny houses for her that she wanted for the wrens that came about their farm, She told him that those little birds are so good at catching insects that they ought to give all their time to it, and not have any worry about making houses. Her father made their homes very small, so that the English sparrows could not get in and crowd them out.

A boy said that he had gotten a pot of paint, and painted in large letters on the fences around his father's farm: "Spare the toads, don't kill the birds. Every bird killed is a loss to the country."

"That reminds me," said the president, "to ask the girls what they have done about the millinery business."

"I have told my mother," said a tall, serious faced girl, "that I think it is wrong to wear bird feathers, and she has promised to give up wearing any of them except ostrich plumes."

Mrs. Wood asked permission to say a few words just here, and the president said: "Certainly, we are always glad to hear from you."

She went up on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston, giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that grows swarms with insect life, and that they couldn't grow if the birds didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long, the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats the chinchbug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many other birds eat the flies and gnats and mosquitoes that torment us so. No flying or crawling creature escapes their sharp little eyes. A great Frenchman says that if it weren't for the birds human beings would perish from the face of the earth. They are doing all this for us, and how are we rewarding them? All over America they are hunted and killed. Five million birds must be caught every year for American women to wear in their hats and bonnets. Just think of it, girls. Isn't it dreadful? Five million innocent, hard-working, beautiful birds killed, that thoughtless girls and women may ornament themselves with their little dead bodies. One million bobolinks have been killed in one month near Philadelphia. Seventy song-birds were sent from one Long Island village to New York milliners.

"In Florida, cruel men shoot the mother bird. on their nests while they are rearing their young. because their plumage is prettiest at that time. The little ones cry pitifully, and starve to death. Every bird of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and kingfishers, means the death of several others that is, the young that starve to death, the wounded that fly away to die, and those whose plumage is so torn that it is not fit to put in a fine lady's bonnet. In some cases where birds have gay wings, and the hunters do not wish the rest of the body, they tear off the wings from the living bird, and throw it away to die.

"I am sorry to tell you such painful things, but I think you ought to know them. You will soon be men and women. Do what you can to stop this horrid trade. Our beautiful birds are being taken from us, and the insect pests are increasing. The State of Massachusetts has lost over one hundred thousand dollars because it did not protect its birds. The gypsy moth stripped the trees near Boston, and the State had to pay out all this money, and even then could not get rid of the moths. The birds could have done it better than the State, but they were all gone. My last words to you are, ' Protect the birds.'" Mrs. Wood went to her seat, and though the boys and girls had listened very attentively, none of them cheered her. Their faces looked sad, and they kept very quiet for a few minutes. I saw one or two little girls wiping their eyes. I think they felt sorry for the birds.

"Has any boy done anything about blinders and check-reins?" asked the president, after a time.

A brown-faced boy stood up. "I had a picnic last Monday," he said; "father let me cut all the blinders off our head-stalls with my penknife."

"How did you get him to consent to that?" asked the president.

"I told him," said the boy, "that I couldn't get to sleep for thinking of him. You know he drives a good deal late at night. I told him that every dark night he came from Sudbury I thought of the deep ditch alongside the road, and wished his horses hadn't blinders on. And every night he comes from the Junction, and has to drive along the river bank where the water has washed away the earth till the wheels of the wagon are within a foot or two of the edge, I wished again that his horses could see each side of them, for I knew they'd have sense enough to keep out of danger if they could see it. Father said that might be very true, and yet his horses had been broken in with blinders, and didn't I think they would be inclined to shy if he took them off; and wouldn't they be frightened to look around and see the wagon wheels so near. I told him that for every accident that happened to a horse without blinders, several happened to a horse with them; and then I gave him Mr. Wood's opinion Mr. Wood out at Dingley Farm. He says that the worst thing against blinders is that a frightened horse never knows when he has passed the thing that scared him. He always thinks it is behind him. The blinders are there and he can't see that he has passed it, and he can't turn his head to have a good look at it. So often he goes tearing madly on; and sometimes lives are lost all on account of a little bit of leather fastened over a beautiful eye that ought to look out full and free at the world. That finished father. He said he'd take off his blinders, and if he had an accident, he'd send the bill for damages to Mr. Wood. But we've had no accident. The horses did act rather queerly at first, and started a little; but they soon got over it, and now they go as steady without blinders as they ever did with them."

The boy sat down, and the president said: "I think it is time that the whole nation threw off this foolishness of half covering their horses' eyes. Just put your hands up to your eyes, members of the band. Half cover them, and see how shut in you will feel; and how curious you will be to know what is going on beside you. Suppose a girl saw a mouse with her eyes half covered, wouldn't she run?"

Everybody laughed, and the president asked some one to tell him who invented blinders.

"An English nobleman," shouted a boy, "who had a wall-eyed horse! He wanted to cover up the defect, and I think it is a great shame that all the American horses have to suffer because that English one had an ugly eye."

"So do I," said the president. "Three groans for blinders, boys."

And the children in the room made three dreadful noises away down in their throats. Then they had another good laugh, and the president became sober again. "Seven more minutes," he said; "this meeting has got to be let out at five sharp."

A tall girl at the back of the room rose, and said: "My little cousin has two stories that she would like to tell the band."

"Very well," said the president; "bring her right along."

The big girl came forward, leading a tiny child that she placed in front of the boys and girls. The child stared up into her cousin's face, turning and twisting her white pinafore through her fingers. Every time the big girl took her pinafore away from her, she picked it up again. "Begin, Nannie," said the big girl, kindly.

"Well, Cousin Eleanor," said the child, "you know Topsy, Graham's pony. Well, Topsy would run away, and a big, big man came out to papa and said he would train Topsy. So he drove her every day, and beat her, and beat her, till he was tired, but still Topsy would run away. Then papa said he would not have the poor pony whipped so much, and he took her out a piece of bread every day, and he petted her and now Topsy is very gentle, and never runs away."

"Tell about Tiger," said the girl.

"Well, Cousin Eleanor," said the child, "you know Tiger, our big dog. He used to be a bad dog, and when Dr. Fairchild drove up to the house he jumped up and bit at him. Dr. Fairchild used to speak kindly to him, and throw out bits of meat, and now when he comes, Tiger follows behind and wags his tail. Now, give me a kiss."

The girl had to give her a kiss, right up there before every one, and what a stamping the boys made. The larger girl blushed and hurried back to her seat, with the child clinging to her hand.

There was one more story, about a brave Newfoundland dog, that saved eight lives by swimming out to a wrecked sailing vessel, and getting a rope by which the men came ashore, and then a lad got up whom they all greeted with cheers, and cries of, "The Poet! the Poet!" I didn't know what they meant, till Mrs. Wood whispered to Miss Laura that he was a boy who made rhymes, and the children had rather hear him. speak than any one else in the room.

He had a snub nose and freckles, and I think he was the plainest boy there, but that didn't matter, if the other children loved him. He sauntered up to the front, with his hands behind his back, and a very grand manner.

"The beautiful poetry recited here to-day," he drawled, "put some verses in my mind that I never had till I came here to-day." Every one present cheered wildly, and he began in a sing song voice:

"I am a Band of Mercy boy,

I would not hurt a fly,

I always speak to dogs and cats,

When'er I pass them by.

"I always let the birdies sing,

I never throw a stone,

I always give a hungry dog

A nice, fat, meaty bone.

I wouldn't drive a bob-tailed horse,

Nor hurry up a cow,

I "

Then he forgot the rest. The boys and girls ,were so sorry. They called out, "Pig," "Goat," "Calf," "Sheep," "Hens," "Ducks," and all the other animals' names they could think of, but none of them was right, and as the boy had just made up the poetry, no one knew what the next could be. He stood for a long time staring at the ceiling, then he said, "I guess I'll have to give it up."

The children looked dreadfully disappointed. "Perhaps you will remember it by our next meeting," said the president, anxiously.

"Possibly, said the boy, "but probably not. I think it is gone forever." And he went to his seat.

The next thing was to call for new members. Miss Laura got up and said she would like to join their Band of Mercy. I followed her up to the platform, while they pinned a little badge on her, and every one laughed at me. Then they sang, "God Bless our Native Land," and the president told us that we might all go home.

It seemed to me a lovely thing for those children to meet together to talk about kindness to animals. They all had bright and good faces, and many of them stopped to pat me as I came out. One little girl gave me a biscuit from her school bag.

Mrs. Wood waited at the door till Mr. Maxwell came limping out on his crutches. She introduced him to Miss Laura, and asked him if he wouldn't go and take tea with them. He said he would be very happy to do so, and then Mrs. Wood laughed; and asked him if he hadn't better empty his pockets first. She didn't want a little toad jumping over her tea table, as one did the last time he was there.

CHAPTER XXI MR. MAXWELL AND MR. HARRY

MR. MAXWELL wore a coat with loose pockets, and while she was speaking, he rested on his crutches, and began to slap them with his hands. "No; there's nothing here to-day," he said; "I think I emptied my pockets before I went to the meeting."

Just as he said that there was a loud squeal: "Oh, my guinea pig," he exclaimed; "I forgot him," and he pulled out a little spotted creature a few inches long. "Poor Derry, did I hurt you?" and he soothed it very tenderly.

I stood and looked at Mr. Maxwell, for I had never seen any one like him. He had thick curly hair and a white face, and he looked just like a girl. While I was staring at him, something peeped up out of one of his pockets and ran out its tongue at me so fast that I could scarcely see it, and then drew back again. I was thunderstruck. I had never seen such a creature before. It was long and thin like a boy's cane, and of a bright green color like grass, and it had queer shiny eyes. But its tongue was the strangest part of it. It came and went like lightning. I was uneasy about it, and began to bark.

"What's the matter, Joe?" said Mrs. Wood; "the pig won't hurt you."

But it wasn't the pig I was afraid of, and I kept on barking. And all the time that strange live thing kept sticking up its head and putting out its tongue at me, and neither of them noticed it.

"It's getting on toward six," said Mrs. Wood; "we must be going home. Come, Mr. Maxwell."

The young man put the guinea pig in his pocket, picked up his crutches, and we started down the sunny village street. He left his guinea pig at his boarding house as he went by, but he said nothing about the other creature, so I knew he did not know it was there.

I was very much taken with Mr. Maxwell. He seemed so bright and happy, in spite of his lameness, which kept him from running about like other young men. He looked a little older than Miss Laura, and one day, a week or two later, when they were sitting on the veranda, I heard him tell her that he was just nineteen. He told her, too, that his lameness made him love animals. They never laughed at him, or slighted him, or got impatient, because he could not walk quickly. They were always good to him, and he said he loved all animals while he liked very few people.

On this day as he was limping along, he said to Mrs. Wood: "I am getting more absent-minded every day. Have you heard of my latest escapade?"

"No," she said.

"I am glad," he replied. "I was afraid that it would be all over the village by this time. I went to church last Sunday with my poor guinea pig in my pocket. He hasn't been well, and I was attending to him before church, and put him in there to get warm, and forgot about him. Unfortunately I was late, and the back seats were all full, so I had to sit farther up than I usually do. During the first hymn I happened to strike Piggy against the side of the seat. Such an ear- splitting squeal as he set up. It sounded as if I was murdering him. The people stared and stared, and I had to leave the church, overwhelmed with confusion."

Mrs. Wood and Miss Laura laughed, and then they got talking about other matters that were not interesting to me, so I did not listen. But I kept close to Miss Laura, for I was afraid that green thing might hurt her. I wondered very much what its name was. I don't think I should have feared it so much if I had known what it was.

"There's something the matter with Joe," said Miss Laura, when we got into the lane. "What is it, dear old fellow?" She put down her little hand, and I licked it, and wished so much that I could speak.

Sometimes I wish very much that I had the gift of speech, and then at other times I see how little it would profit me, and how many foolish things I should often say. And I don't believe human beings would love animals as well, if they could speak.

When we reached the house, we got a joyful surprise. There was a trunk standing on the veranda, and as soon as Mrs. Wood saw it, she gave a little shriek: "My dear boy!"

Mr. Harry was there, sure enough, and stepped out through the open door. He took his mother in his arms and kissed her, then he shook hands with Miss Laura and Mr. Maxwell, who seemed to be an old friend of his. They all sat down on the veranda and talked, and I lay at Miss Laura's feet and looked at Mr. Harry. He was such a handsome young man, and had such a noble face. He was older and graver looking than when I saw him last, and he had a light, brown mustache that he did not have when he was in Fairport.

He seemed very fond of his mother and of Miss Laura, and however grave his face might be when he was looking at Mr. Maxwell, it always lighted up when he turned to them. "What dog is that?" he said at last, with a puzzled face, and pointing to me.

"Why, Harry," exclaimed Miss Laura, "don't you know Beautiful Joe, that you rescued from that wretched milkman?"

"Is it possible," he said, "that this well-conditioned creature is the bundle of dirty skin and bones that we nursed in Fairport? Come here, sir. Do you remember me?"

Indeed I did remember him, and I licked his hands and looked up gratefully into his face. "You're almost handsome now," he said, caressing me with a firm, kind hand, "and of a solid build, too. You look like a fighter but I suppose you wouldn't let him fight, even if he wanted to, Laura," and he smiled and glanced

"They're off!" she heard him say.

They came, stepping from the chancel. Holly looked first in young Mont's face. His lips and ears were twitching, his eyes, shifting from his feet to the hand within his arm, stared suddenly before them as if to face a firing party. He gave Holly the feeling that he was spiritually intoxicated. But Fleur! Ah! That was different. The girl was perfectly composed, prettier than ever, in her white robes and veil over her banged dark chestnut hair; her eyelids hovered demure over her dark hazel eyes. Outwardly, she seemed all there. But inwardly, where was she? As those two passed, Fleur raised her eyelids--the restless glint of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the flutter of caged bird's wings.

In Green Street Winifred stood to receive, just a little less composed than usual. Soames' request for the use of her house had come on her at a deeply psychological moment. Under the influence of a remark of Prosper Profond, she had begun to exchange her Empire for Expressionistic furniture. There were the most amusing arrangements, with violet, green, and orange blobs and scriggles, to be had at Mealard's. Another month and the change would have been complete. Just now, the very "intriguing" recruits she had enlisted, did not march too well with the old guard. It was as if her regiment were half in khaki, half in scarlet and bearskins. But her strong and comfortable character made the best of it in a drawing-room which typified, perhaps, more perfectly than she imagined, the semi- bolshevized imperialism of her country. After all, this was a day of merger, and you couldn't have too much of it! Her eyes travelled indulgently among her guests. Soames had gripped the back of a buhl chair; young Mont was behind that "awfully amusing" screen, which no one as yet had been able to explain to her. The ninth baronet had shied violently at a round scarlet table, inlaid under glass with blue Australian butteries' wings, and was clinging to her Louis- Quinze cabinet; Francie Forsyte had seized the new mantel-board, finely carved with little purple grotesques on an ebony ground; George, over by the old spinet, was holding a little sky-blue book as if about to enter bets; Prosper Profond was twiddling the knob of the open door, black with peacock-blue panels; and Annette's hands, close by, were grasping her own waist; two Muskhams clung to the balcony among the plants, as if feeling ill; Lady Mont, thin and brave- looking, had taken up her long-handled glasses and was gazing at the central light shade, of ivory and orange dashed with deep magenta, as if the heavens had opened. Everybody, in fact, seemed holding on to something. Only Fleur, still in her bridal dress, was detached from all support, flinging her words and glances to left and right.

The room was full of the bubble and the squeak of conversation. Nobody could hear anything that anybody said; which seemed of little consequence, since no one waited for anything so slow as an answer. Modern conversation seemed to Winifred so different from the days of her prime, when a drawl was all the vogue. Still it was "amusing," which, of course, was all that mattered. Even the Forsytes were talking with extreme rapidity--Fleur and Christopher, and Imogen, and young Nicholas's youngest, Patrick. Soames, of course, was silent; but George, by the spinet, kept up a running commentary, and Francie, by her mantel-shelf. Winifred drew nearer to the ninth baronet. He seemed to promise a certain repose; his nose was fine and drooped a little, his grey moustaches too; and she said, drawling through her smile:

"It's rather nice, isn't it?"

His reply shot out of his smile like a snipped bread pellet

"D'you remember, in Frazer, the tribe that buries the bride up to the waist?"

He spoke as fast as anybody! He had dark lively little eyes, too, all crinkled round like a Catholic priest's. Winifred felt suddenly he might say things she would regret.

"They're always so amusing--weddings," she murmured, and moved on to Soames. He was curiously still, and Winifred saw at once what was dictating his immobility. To his right was George Forsyte, to his left Annette and Prosper Profond. He could not move without either seeing those two together, or the reflection of them in George Forsyte's japing eyes. He was quite right not to be taking notice.

"They say Timothy's sinking;" he said glumly.

"Where will you put him, Soames?"

"Highgate." He counted on his fingers. "It'll make twelve of them there, including wives. How do you think Fleur looks?"

"Remarkably well."

Soames nodded. He had never seen her look prettier, yet he could not rid himself of the impression that this business was unnatural-- remembering still that crushed figure burrowing into the corner of the sofa. From that night to this day he had received from her no confidences. He knew from his chauffeur that she had made one more attempt on Robin Hill and drawn blank--an empty house, no one at home. He knew that she had received a letter, but not what was in it, except that it had made her hide herself and cry. He had remarked that she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn't noticing, as if she were wondering still what he had done--forsooth-- to make those people hate him so. Well, there it was! Annette had come back, and things had worn on through the summer--very miserable, till suddenly Fleur had said she was going to marry young Mont. She had shown him a little more affection when she told him that. And he had yielded--what was the good of opposing it? God knew that he had never wished to thwart her in anything! And the young man seemed quite delirious about her. No doubt she was in a reckless mood, and she was young, absurdly young. But if he opposed her, he didn't know what she would do; for all he could tell she might want to take up a profession, become a doctor or solicitor, some nonsense. She had no aptitude for painting, writing, music, in his view the legitimate occupations of unmarried women, if they must do something in these days. On the whole, she was safer married, for he could see too well how feverish and restless she was at home. Annette, too, had been in favour of it--Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: "Let her marry this young man. He is a nice boy--not so highty- flighty as he seems." Where she got her expressions, he didn't know- -but her opinion soothed his doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement in case it didn't turn out well. Could it turn out well? She had not got over that other boy--he knew. They were to go to Spain for the honeymoon. He would be even lonelier when she was gone. But later, perhaps, she would forget, and turn to him again! Winifred's voice broke on his reverie.

"Why! Of all wonders-June!"

There, in a djibbah--what things she wore!--with her hair straying from under a fillet, Soames saw his cousin, and Fleur going forward to greet her. The two passed from their view out on to the stairway.

"Really," said Winifred, "she does the most impossible things! Fancy her coming!"

"What made you ask her?" muttered Soames.

"Because I thought she wouldn't accept, of course."

Winifred had forgotten that behind conduct lies the main trend of character; or, in other words, omitted to remember that Fleur was now a "lame duck."

On receiving her invitation, June had first thought, 'I wouldn't go near them for the world!' and then, one morning, had awakened from a dream of Fleur waving to her from a boat with a wild unhappy gesture. And she had changed her mind.

When Fleur came forward and said to her, "Do come up while I'm changing my dress," she had followed up the stairs. The girl led the way into Imogen's old bedroom, set ready for her toilet.

June sat down on the bed, thin and upright, like a little spirit in the sear and yellow. Fleur locked the door.

The girl stood before her divested of her wedding dress. What a pretty thing she was

"I suppose you think me a fool," she said, with quivering lips, "when it was to have been Jon. But what does it matter? Michael wants me, and I don't care. It'll get me away from home." Diving her hand into the frills on her breast, she brought out a letter. "Jon wrote me this."

June read: "Lake Okanagen, British Columbia. I'm not coming back to England. Bless you always. Jon."

"She's made safe, you see," said Fleur.

June handed back the letter.

"That's not fair to Irene," she said, "she always told Jon he could do as he wished."

Fleur smiled bitterly. "Tell me, didn't she spoil your life too?" June looked up. "Nobody can spoil a life, my dear. That's nonsense. Things happen, but we bob up."

With a sort of terror she saw the girl sink on her knees and bury her face in the djibbah. A strangled sob mounted to June's ears.

"It's all right--all right," she murmured, "Don't! There, there!"

But the point of the girl's chin was pressed ever closer into her thigh, and the sound was dreadful of her sobbing.

Well, well! It had to come. She would feel better afterward! June stroked the short hair of that shapely head; and all the scattered mother-sense in her focussed itself and passed through the tips of her fingers into the girl's brain.

"Don't sit down under it, my dear," she said at last. "We can't control life, but we can fight it. Make the best of things. I've had to. I held on, like you; and I cried, as you're crying now. And look at me!"

Fleur raised her head; a sob merged suddenly into a little choked laugh. In truth it was a thin and rather wild and wasted spirit she was looking at, but it had brave eyes.

"All right!" she said. "I'm sorry. I shall forget him, I suppose, if I fly fast and far enough."

And, scrambling to her feet, she went over to the wash-stand.

June watched her removing with cold water the traces of emotion. Save for a little becoming pinkness there was nothing left when she stood before the mirror. June got off the bed and took a pin-cushion in her hand. To put two pins into the wrong places was all the vent she found for sympathy.

"Give me a kiss," she said when Fleur was ready, and dug her chin into the girl's warm cheek.

"I want a whiff," said Fleur; "don't wait."

June left her, sitting on the bed with a cigarette between her lips and her eyes half closed, and went down-stairs. In the doorway of the drawing-room stood Soames as if unquiet at his daughter's tardiness. June tossed her head and passed down on to the half- landing. Her cousin Francie was standing there.

"Look!" said June, pointing with her chin at Soames. "That man's fatal!"

"How do you mean," said Francie, "fatal?"

June did not answer her. "I shan't wait to see them off," she said. "Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!" said Francie, and her eyes, of a Celtic grey, goggled. That old feud! Really, it was quite romantic!

Soames, moving to the well of the staircase, saw June go, and drew a breath of satisfaction. Why didn't Fleur come? They would miss their train. That train would bear her away from him, yet he could not help fidgeting at the thought that they would lose it. And then she did come, running down in her tan-coloured frock and black velvet cap, and passed him into the drawing-room. He saw her kiss her mother, her aunt, Val's wife, Imogen, and then come forth, quick and pretty as ever. How would she treat him at this last moment of her girlhood? He couldn't hope for much!

Her lips pressed the middle of his cheek.

"Daddy!" she said, and was past and gone! Daddy! She hadn't called him that for years. He drew a long breath and followed slowly down. There was all the folly with that confetti stuff and the rest of it to go through with yet. But he would like just to catch her smile, if she leaned out, though they would hit her in the eye with the shoe, if they didn't take care. Young Mont's voice said fervently in his ear:

"Good-bye, sir; and thank you! I'm so fearfully bucked."

"Good-bye," he said; "don't miss your train."

He stood on the bottom step but three, whence he could see above the heads--the silly hats and heads. They were in the car now; and there was that stuff, showering, and there went the shoe. A flood of something welled up in Soames, and--he didn't know--he couldn't see!

XI

THE LAST OF THE OLD FORSYTES

When they came to prepare that terrific symbol Timothy Forsyte--the one pure individualist left, the only man who hadn't heard of the Great War--they found him wonderful--not even death had undermined his soundness.

To Smither and Cook that preparation came like final evidence of what they had never believed possible--the end of the old Forsyte family on earth. Poor Mr. Timothy must now take a harp and sing in the company of Miss Forsyte, Mrs. Julia, Miss Hester; with Mr. Jolyon, Mr. Swithin, Mr. James, Mr. Roger, and Mr. Nicholas of the party. Whether Mrs. Hayman would be there was more doubtful, seeing that she had been cremated. Secretly Cook thought that Mr. Timothy would be upset--he had always been so set against barrel organs. How many times had she not said: "Drat the thing! There it is again! Smither, you'd better run up and see what you can do." And in her heart she would so have enjoyed the tunes, if she hadn't known that Mr. Timothy would ring the bell in a minute and say: "Here, take him a halfpenny and tell him to move on." Often they had been obliged to add threepence of their own before the man would go--Timothy had ever underrated the value of emotion. Luckily he had taken the organs for blue-bottles in his last years, which had been a comfort, and they had been able to enjoy the tunes. But a harp! Cook wondered. It was a change! And Mr. Timothy had never liked change. But she did not speak of this to Smither, who did so take a line of her own in regard to heaven that it quite put one about sometimes.

She cried while Timothy was being prepared, and they all had sherry afterward out of the yearly Christmas bottle, which would not be needed now. Ah! dear! She had been there five-and-forty years and Smither three-and-forty! And now they would be going to a tiny house in Tooting, to live on their savings and what Miss Hester had so kindly left them--for to take fresh service after the glorious past-- No! But they would like just to see Mr. Soames again, and Mrs. Dartie, and Miss Francie, and Miss Euphemia. And even if they had to take their own cab, they felt they must go to the funeral. For six years Mr. Timothy had been their baby, getting younger and younger every day, till at last he had been too young to live.

They spent the regulation hours of waiting in polishing and dusting, in catching the one mouse left, and asphyxiating the last beetle so as to leave it nice, discussing with each other what they would buy at the sale. Miss Ann's workbox; Miss Juley's (that is Mrs. Julia's) seaweed album; the fire-screen Miss Hester had crewelled; and Mr. Timothy's hair--little golden curls, glued into a black frame. Oh! they must have those--only the price of things had gone up so!

It fell to Soames to issue invitations for the funeral. He had them drawn up by Gradman in his office--only blood relations, and no flowers. Six carriages were ordered. The Will would be read afterward at the house.

He arrived at eleven o'clock to see that all was ready. At a quarter past old Gradman came in black gloves and crape on his hat. He and Soames stood in the drawing-room waiting. At half-past eleven the carriages drew up in a long row. But no one else appeared. Gradman said:

"It surprises me, Mr. Soames. I posted them myself."

"I don't know," said Soames; "he'd lost touch with the family." Soames had often noticed in old days how much more neighbourly his family were to the dead than to the living. But, now, the way they had flocked to Fleur's wedding and abstained from Timothy's funeral, seemed to show some vital change. There might, of course, be another reason; for Soames felt that if he had not known the contents of Timothy's Will, he might have stayed away himself through delicacy. Timothy had left a lot of money, with nobody in particular to leave it to. They mightn't like to seem to expect something.

At twelve o'clock the procession left the door; Timothy alone in the first carriage under glass. Then Soames alone; then Gradman alone; then Cook and Smither together. They started at a walk, but were soon trotting under a bright sky. At the entrance to Highgate Cemetery they were delayed by service in the Chapel. Soames would have liked to stay outside in the sunshine. He didn't believe a word of it; on the other hand, it was a form of insurance which could not safely be neglected, in case there might be something in it after all.

They walked up two and two--he and Gradman, Cook and Smither--to the family vault. It was not very distinguished for the funeral of the last old Forsyte.

He took Gradman into his carriage on the way back to the Bayswater Road with a certain glow in his heart. He had a surprise in pickle for the old chap who had served the Forsytes four-and-fifty years-a treat that was entirely his doing. How well he remembered saying to Timothy the day--after Aunt Hester's funeral: "Well; Uncle Timothy, there's Gradman. He's taken a lot of trouble for the family. What do you say to leaving him five thousand?" and his surprise, seeing the diflicuIty there had been in getting Timothy to leave anything, when Timothy had nodded. And now the old chap would be as pleased as Punch, for Mrs. Gradman, he knew, had a weak heart, and their son had lost a leg in the War. It was extraordinarily gratifying to Soames to have left him five thousand pounds of Timothy's money. They sat down together in the little drawing-room, whose walls--like a vision of heaven--were sky-blue and gold with every picture-frame unnaturally bright, and every speck of dust removed from every piece of furniture, to read that little masterpiece--the Will of Timothy. With his back to the light in Aunt Hester's chair, Soames faced Gradman with his face to the light, on Aunt Ann's sofa; and, crossing his legs, began:

"This is the last Will and Testament of me Timothy Forsyte of The Bower Bayswater Road, London I appoint my nephew Soames Forsyte of The Shelter Mapleduram and Thomas Gradman of 159 Folly Road Highgate (hereinafter called my Trustees) to be the trustees and executors of this my Will To the said Soames Forsyte I leave the sum of one thousand pounds free of legacy duty and to the said Thomas Gradman I leave the sum of five thousand pounds free of legacy duty."

Soames paused. Old Gradman was leaning forward, convulsively gripping a stout black knee with each of his thick hands; his mouth had fallen open so that the gold fillings of three teeth gleamed; his eyes were blinking, two tears rolled slowly out of them. Soames read hastily on.

"All the rest of my property of whatsoever description I bequeath to my Trustees upon Trust to convert and hold the same upon the following trusts namely To pay thereout all my debts funeral expenses and outgoings of any kind in connection with my Will and to hold the residue thereof in trust for that male lineal descendant of my father Jolyon Forsyte by his marriage with Ann Pierce who after the decease of all lineal descendants whether male or female of my said father by his said marriage in being at the time of my death shall last attain the age of twenty-one years absolutely it being my desire that my property shall be nursed to the extreme limit permitted by the laws of England for the benefit of such male lineal descendant as aforesaid."

Soames read the investment and attestation clauses, and, ceasing, looked at Gradman. The old fellow was wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, whose brilliant colour supplied a sudden festive tinge to the proceedings.

"My word, Mr. Soames!" he said, and it was clear that the lawyer in him had utterly wiped out the man: "My word! Why, there are two babies now, and some quite young children--if one of them lives to be eighty--it's not a great age--and add twenty-one--that's a hundred years; and Mr. Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound net if he's worth a penny. Compound interest at five per cent. doubles you in fourteen years. In fourteen years three hundred thousand-six hundred thousand in twenty-eight--twelve hundred thousand in forty- two--twenty-four hundred thousand in fifty-six--four million eight hundred thousand in seventy--nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four--Why, in a hundred years it'll be twenty million! And we shan't live to use it! It is a Will!"

Soames said dryly: "Anything may happen. The State might take the lot; they're capable of anything in these days."

"And carry five," said Gradman to himself. "I forgot--Mr. Timothy's in Consols; we shan't get more than two per cent. with this income tax. To be on the safe side, say eight millions. Still, that's a pretty penny."

Soames rose and handed him the Will. "You're going into the City. Take care of that, and do what's necessary. Advertise; but there are no debts. When's the sale?"

"Tuesday week," said Gradman. "Life or lives in bein' and twenty-one years afterward--it's a long way off. But I'm glad he's left it in the family...."

The sale--not at Jobson's, in view of the Victorian nature of the effects--was far more freely attended than the funeral, though not by Cook and Smither, for Soames had taken it on himself to give them their heart's desires. Winifred was present, Euphemia, and Francie, and Eustace had come in his car. The miniatures, Barbizons, and J. R. drawings had been bought in by Soames; and relics of no marketable value were set aside in an off-room for members of the family who cared to have mementoes. These were the only restrictions upon bidding characterised by an almost tragic languor. Not one piece of furniture, no picture or porcelain figure appealed to modern taste. The humming birds had fallen like autumn leaves when taken from where they had not hummed for sixty years. It was painful to Soames to see the chairs his aunts had sat on, the little grand piano they had practically never played, the books whose outsides they had gazed at, the china they had dusted, the curtains they had drawn, the hearth- rug which had warmed their feet; above all, the beds they had lain and died in--sold to little dealers, and the housewives of Fulham. And yet--what could one do? Buy them and stick them in a lumber- room? No; they had to go the way of all flesh and furniture, and be worn out. But when they put up Aunt Ann's sofa and were going to knock it down for thirty shillings, he cried out, suddenly: "Five pounds!" The sensation was considerable, and the sofa his.

When that little sale was over in the fusty saleroom, and those Victorian ashes scattered, he went out into the misty October sunshine feeling as if cosiness had died out of the world, and the board "To Let" was up, indeed. Revolutions on the horizon; Fleur in Spain; no comfort in Annette; no Timothy's on the Bayswater Road. In the irritable desolation of his soul he went into the Goupenor Gallery. That chap Jolyon's watercoIours were on view there. He went in to look down his nose at them--it might give him some faint satisfaction. The news had trickled through from June to Val's wife, from her to Val, from Val to his mother, from her to Soames, that the house--the fatal house at Robin Hill--was for sale, and Irene going to join her boy out in British Columbia, or some such place. For one wild moment the thought had come to Soames: 'Why shouldn't I buy it back? I meant it for my!' No sooner come than gone. Too lugubrious a triumph; with too many humiliating memories for himself and Fleur. She would never live there after what had happened. No, the place must go its way to some peer or profiteer. It had been a bone of contention from the first, the shell of the feud; and with the woman gone, it was an empty shell. "For Sale or To Let." With his mind's eye he could see that board raised high above the ivied wall which he had built.

He passed through the first of the two rooms in the Gallery. There was certainly a body of work! And now that the fellow was dead it did not seem so trivial. The drawings were pleasing enough, with quite a sense of atmosphere, and something individual in the brush work. 'His father and my father; he and I; his child and mine!' thought Soames. So it had gone on! And all about that woman! Softened by the events of the past week, affected by the melancholy beauty of the autumn day, Soames came nearer than he had ever been to realisation of that truth--passing the understanding of a Forsyte pure--that the body of Beauty has a spiritual essence, uncapturable save by a devotion which thinks not of self. After all, he was near that truth in his devotion to his daughter; perhaps that made him understand a little how he had missed the prize. And there, among the drawings of his kinsman, who had attained to that which he had found beyond his reach, he thought of him and her with a tolerance which surprised him. But he did not buy a drawing.

Just as he passed the seat of custom on his return to the outer air he met with a contingency which had not been entirely absent from his mind when he went into the Gallery--Irene, herself, coming in. So she had not gone yet, and was still paying farewell visits to that fellow's remains! He subdued the little involuntary leap of his subconsciousness, the mechanical reaction of his senses to the charm of this once-owned woman, and passed her with averted eyes. But when he had gone by he could not for the life of him help looking back. This, then, was finality--the heat and stress of his life, the madness and the longing thereof, the only defeat he had known, would be over when she faded from his view this time; even such memories had their own queer aching value.

She, too, was looking back. Suddenly she lifted her gloved hand, her lips smiled faintly, her dark eyes seemed to speak. It was the turn of Soames to make no answer to that smile and that little farewell wave; he went out into the fashionable street quivering from head to foot. He knew what she had meant to say: "Now that I am going for ever out of the reach of you and yours--forgive me; I wish you well." That was the meaning; last sign of that terrible reality--passing morality, duty, common sense--her aversion from him who had owned her body, but had never touched her spirit or her heart. It hurt; yes-- more than if she had kept her mask unmoved, her hand unlifted.

Three days later, in that fast-yellowing October, Soames took a taxi- cab to Highgate Cemetery and mounted through its white forest to the Forsyte vault. Close to the cedar, above catacombs and columbaria, tall, ugly, and individual, it looked like an apex of the competitive system. He could remember a discussion wherein Swithin had advocated the addition to its face of the pheasant proper. The proposal had been rejected in favour of a wreath in stone, above the stark words: "The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." It was in good order. All trace of the recent interment had been removed, and its sober grey gloomed reposefully in the sunshine. The whole family lay there now, except old Jolyon's wife, who had gone back under a contract to her own family vault in Suffolk; old Jolyon himself lying at Robin Hill; and Susan Hayman, cremated so that none knew where she might be. Soames gazed at it with satisfaction--massive, needing little attention; and this was important, for he was well aware that no one would attend to it when he himself was gone, and he would have to be looking out for lodgings soon. He might have twenty years before him, but one never knew. Twenty years without an aunt or uncle, with a wife of whom one had better not know anything, with a daughter gone from home. His mood inclined to melancholy and retrospection.

This cemetery was full, they said--of people with extraordinary names, buried in extraordinary taste. Still, they had a fine view up here, right over London. Annette had once given him a story to read by that Frenchman, Maupassant, most lugubrious concern, where all the skeletons emerged from their graves one night, and all the pious inscriptions on the stones were altered to descriptions of their sins. Not a true story at all. He didn't know about the French, but there was not much real harm in English people except their teeth and their taste, which was certainly deplorable. "The family vault of Jolyon Forsyte: 1850." A lot of people had been buried here since then--a lot of English life crumbled to mould and dust! The boom of an airplane passing under the gold-tinted clouds caused him to lift his eyes. The deuce of a lot of expansion had gone on. But it all came back to a cemetery--to a name and a date on a tomb. And he thought with a curious pride that he and his family had done little or nothing to help this feverish expansion. Good solid middlemen, they had gone to work with dignity to manage and possess. "Superior Dosset," indeed, had built in a dreadful, and Jolyon painted in a doubtful, period, but so far as he remembered not another of them all had soiled his hands by creating anything--unless you counted Val Dartie and his horse-breeding. Collectors, solicitors, barristers, merchants, publishers, accountants, directors, land agents, even soldiers--there they had been! The country had expanded, as it were, in spite of them. They had checked, controlled, defended, and taken advantage of the process and when you considered how "Superior Dosset" had begun life with next to nothing, and his lineal descendants already owned what old Gradman estimated at between a million and a million and a half, it was not so bad! And yet he sometimes felt as if the family bolt was shot, their possessive instinct dying out. They seemed unable to make money--this fourth generation; they were going into art, literature, farming, or the army; or just living on what was left them--they had no push and no tenacity. They would die out if they didn't take care.

Soames turned from the vault and faced toward the breeze. The air up here would be delicious if only he could rid his nerves of the feeling that mortality was in it. He gazed restlessly at the crosses and the urns, the angels, the "immortelles," the flowers, gaudy or withering; and suddenly he noticed a spot which seemed so different from anything else up there that he was obliged to walk the few necessary yards and look at it. A sober corner, with a massive queer-shaped cross of grey rough-hewn granite, guarded by four dark yew-trees. The spot was free from the pressure of the other graves, having a little box-hedged garden on the far side, and in front a goldening birch-tree. This oasis in the desert of conventional graves appealed to the aesthetic sense of Soames, and he sat down there in the sunshine. Through those trembling gold birch leaves he gazed out at London, and yielded to the waves of memory. He thought of Irene in Montpellier Square, when her hair was rusty-golden and her white shoulders his--Irene, the prize of his love-passion, resistant to his ownership. He saw Bosinney's body lying in that white mortuary, and Irene sitting on the sofa looking at space with the eyes of a dying bird. Again he thought of her by the little green Niobe in the Bois de Boulogne, once more rejecting him. His fancy took him on beside his drifting river on the November day when Fleur was to be born, took him to the dead leaves floating on the green-tinged water and the snake-headed weed for ever swaying and nosing, sinuous, blind, tethered. And on again to the window opened to the cold starry night above Hyde Park, with his father lying dead. His fancy darted to that picture of "the future town," to that boy's and Fleur's first meeting; to the bluish trail of Prosper Profond's cigar, and Fleur in the window pointing down to where the fellow prowled. To the sight of Irene and that dead fellow sitting side by side in the stand at Lord's. To her and that boy at Robin Hill. To the sofa, where Fleur lay crushed up in the corner; to her lips pressed into his cheek, and her farewell "Daddy." And suddenly he saw again Irene's grey-gloved hand waving its last gesture of release.

He sat there a long time dreaming his career, faithful to the scut of his possessive instinct, warming himself even with its failures.

"To Let"--the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew who had his soul. "To Let"--that sane and simple creed!

The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full. He sat there, subconscious of them, but with his thoughts resolutely set on the past--as a man might ride into a wild night with his face to the tail of his galloping horse. Athwart the Victorian dykes the waters were rolling on property, manners, and morals, on melody and the old forms of art--waters bringing to his mouth a salt taste as of blood, lapping to the foot of this Highgate Hill where Victorianism lay buried. And sitting there, high up on its most individual spot, Soames--like a figure of Investment--refused their restless sounds. Instinctively he would not fight them--there was in him too much primeval wisdom, of Man the possessive animal. They would quiet down when they had fulfilled their tidal fever of dispossessing and destroying; when the creations and the properties of others were sufficiently broken and defected--they would lapse and ebb, and fresh forms would rise based on an instinct older than the fever of change- -the instinct of Home.

"Je m'en fiche," said Prosper Profond. Soames did not say "Je m'en fiche"--it was French, and the fellow was a thorn in his side--but deep down he knew that change was only the interval of death between two forms of life, destruction necessary to make room for fresher property. What though the board was up, and cosiness to let?--some one would come along and take it again some day.

And only one thing really troubled him, sitting there--the melancholy craving in his heart--because the sun was like enchantment on his face and on the clouds and on the golden birch leaves, and the wind's rustle was so gentle, and the yewtree green so dark, and the sickle of a moon pale in the sky.

He might wish and wish and never get it--the beauty and the loving in the world!

The maid came back. "Would the gentleman state his business, please?"

"Say it concerns Mr. Jon," said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white marble designed by her first lover. Ah! she had been a bad lot--had loved two men, and not himself! He must remember that when he came face to face with her once more. And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark- eyed gravity, the old calm defensive voice: "Will you come in, please?"

He passed through that opening. As in the picture-gallery and the confectioner's shop, she seemed to him still beautiful. And this was the first time--the very first--since he married her seven-and-thirty years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her his. She was not wearing black--one of that fellow's radical notions, he supposed.

"I apologise for coming," he said glumly; "but this business must be settled one way or the other."

"Won't you sit down?"

"No, thank you."

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them, mastered him, and words came tumbling out:

"It's an infernal mischance; I've done my best to discourage it. I consider my daughter crazy, but I've got into the habit of indulging her; that's why I'm here. I suppose you're fond of your son."

"Devotedly."

"Well?"

"It rests with him."

He had a sense of being met and baffled. Always--always she had baffled him, even in those old first married days.

"It's a mad notion," he said.

"It is."

"If you had only--! Well--they might have been--" he did not finish that sentence "brother and sister and all this saved," but he saw her shudder as if he had, and stung by the sight he crossed over to the window. Out there the trees had not grown--they couldn't, they were old

"So far as I'm concerned," he said, "you may make your mind easy. I desire to see neither you nor your son if this marriage comes about. Young people in these days are--are unaccountable. But I can't bear to see my daughter unhappy. What am I to say to her when I go back?"

"Please say to her as I said to you, that it rests with Jon."

"You don't oppose it?"

"With all my heart; not with my lips."

Soames stood, biting his finger.

"I remember an evening--" he said suddenly; and was silent. What was there--what was there in this woman that would not fit into the four corners of his hate or condemnation? "Where is he--your son?"

"Up in his father's studio, I think."

"Perhaps you'd have him down."

He watched her ring the bell, he watched the maid come in.

"Please tell Mr. Jon that I want him."

"If it rests with him," said Soames hurriedly, when the maid was gone, "I suppose I may take it for granted that this unnatural marriage will take place; in that case there'll be formalities. Whom do I deal with--Herring's?"

Irene nodded.

"You don't propose to live with them?"

Irene shook her head.

"What happens to this house?"

"It will be as Jon wishes."

"This house," said Soames suddenly: "I had hopes when I began it. If they live in it--their children! They say there's such a thing as Nemesis. Do you believe in it?"

"Yes."

"Oh! You do!"

He had come back from the window, and was standing close to her, who, in the curve of her grand piano, was, as it were, embayed.

"I'm not likely to see you again," he said slowly. "Will you shake hands"--his lip quivered, the words came out jerkily--"and let the past die." He held out his hand. Her pale face grew paler, her eyes so dark, rested immovably on his, her hands remained clasped in front of her. He heard a sound and turned. That boy was standing in the opening of the curtains. Very queer he looked, hardly recognisable as the young fellow he had seen in the Gallery off Cork Street--very queer; much older, no youth in the face at all--haggard, rigid, his hair ruffled, his eyes deep in his head. Soames made an effort, and said with a lift of his lip, not quite a smile nor quite a sneer:

"Well, young man! I'm here for my daughter; it rests with you, it seems--this matter. Your mother leaves it in your hands."

The boy continued staring at his mother's face, and made no answer.

"For my daughter's sake I've brought myself to come," said Soames. "What am I to say to her when I go back?"

Still looking at his mother, the boy said, quietly:

"Tell Fleur that it's no good, please; I must do as my father wished before he died."

"Jon!"

"It's all right, Mother."

In a kind of stupefaction Soames looked from one to the other; then, taking up hat and umbrella which he had put down on a chair, he walked toward the curtains. The boy stood aside for him to go by. He passed through and heard the grate of the rings as the curtains were drawn behind him. The sound liberated something in his chest.

'So that's that!' he thought, and passed out of the front door.

VIII

THE DARK TUNE

As Soames walked away from the house at Robin Hill the sun broke through the grey of that chill afternoon, in smoky radiance. So absorbed in landscape painting that he seldom looked seriously for effects of Nature out of doors--he was struck by that moody effulgence--it mourned with a triumph suited to his own feeling. Victory in defeat. His embassy had come to naught. But he was rid of those people, had regained his daughter at the expense of--her happiness. What would Fleur say to him? Would she believe he had done his best? And under that sunlight faring on the elms, hazels, hollies of the lane and those unexploited fields, Soames felt dread. She would be terribly upset! He must appeal to her pride. That boy had given her up, declared part and lot with the woman who so long ago had given her father up! Soames clenched his hands. Given him up, and why? What had been wrong with him? And once more he felt the malaise of one who contemplates himself as seen by another--like a dog who chances on his refection in a mirror and is intrigued and anxious at the unseizable thing.

Not in a hurry to get home, he dined in town at the Connoisseurs. While eating a pear it suddenly occurred to him that, if he had not gone down to Robin Hill, the boy might not have so decided. He remembered the expression on his face while his mother was refusing the hand he had held out. A strange, an awkward thought! Had Fleur cooked her own goose by trying to make too sure?

He reached home at half-past nine. While the car was passing in at one drive gate he heard the grinding sputter of a motor-cycle passing out by the other. Young Mont, no doubt, so Fleur had not been lonely. But he went in with a sinking heart. In the cream-panelled drawing-room she was sitting with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in front of a white camellia plant which filled the fireplace. That glance at her before she saw him renewed his dread. What was she seeing among those white camellias?

"Well, Father!"

Soames shook his head. His tongue failed him. This was murderous work! He saw her eyes dilate, her lips quivering.

"What? What? Quick, Father!"

"My dear," said Soames, "I--I did my best, but--" And again he shook his head.

Fleur ran to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders.

"She?"

"No," muttered Soames; "he. I was to tell you that it was no use; he must do what his father wished before he died." He caught her by the waist. "Come, child, don't let them hurt you. They're not worth your little finger."

Fleur tore herself from his grasp.

"You didn't you--couldn't have tried. You--you betrayed me, Father!"

Bitterly wounded, Soames gazed at her passionate figure writhing there in front of him.

"You didn't try--you didn't--I was a fool! Iwon't believe he could-- he ever could! Only yesterday he--! Oh! why did I ask you?"

"Yes," said Soames, quietly, "why did you? I swallowed my feelings; I did my best for you, against my judgment--and this is my reward. Good-night!"

With every nerve in his body twitching he went toward the door.

Fleur darted after him.

"He gives me up? You mean that? Father!"

Soames turned and forced himself to answer:

"Yes."

"Oh!" cried Fleur. "What did you--what could you have done in those old days?"

The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What had they done to him!

And with quite unconscious dignity he put his hand on his breast, and looked at her.

"It's a shame!" cried Fleur passionately.

Soames went out. He mounted, slow and icy, to his picture gallery, and paced among his treasures. Outrageous! Oh! Outrageous! She was spoiled! Ah! and who had spoiled her? He stood still before the Goya copy. Accustomed to her own way in everything. Flower of his life! And now that she couldn't have it! He turned to the window for some air. Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars! What sound was that? Why! That piano thing! A dark tune, with a thrum and a throb! She had set it going--what comfort could she get from that? His eyes caught movement down there beyond the lawn, under the trellis of rambler roses and young acacia-trees, where the moonlight fell. There she was, roaming up and down. His heart gave a little sickening jump. What would she do under this blow? How could he tell? What did he know of her--he had only loved her all his life--looked on her as the apple of his eye! He knew nothing--had no notion. There she was--and that dark tune--and the river gleaming in the moonlight!

'I must go out,' he thought.

He hastened down to the drawing-room, lighted just as he had left it, with the piano thrumming out that waltz, or fox-trot, or whatever they called it in these days, and passed through on to the verandah.

Where could he watch, without her seeing him? And he stole down through the fruit garden to the boat-house. He was between her and the river now, and his heart felt lighter. She was his daughter, and Annette's--she wouldn't do anything foolish; but there it was--he didn't know! From the boat house window he could see the last acacia and the spin of her skirt when she turned in her restless march. That tune had run down at last--thank goodness! He crossed the floor and looked through the farther window at the water slow-flowing past the lilies. It made little bubbles against them, bright where a moon-streak fell. He remembered suddenly that early morning when he had slept on the house-boat after his father died, and she had just been born--nearly nineteen years ago! Even now he recalled the unaccustomed world when he woke up, the strange feeling it had given him. That day the second passion of his life began--for this girl of his, roaming under the acacias. What a comfort she had been to him! And all the soreness and sense of outrage left him. If he could make her happy again, he didn't care! An owl flew, queeking, queeking; a bat flitted by; the moonlight brightened and broadened on the water. How long was she going to roam about like this! He went back to the window, and suddenly saw her coming down to the bank. She stood quite close, on the landing-stage. And Soames watched, clenching his hands. Should he speak to her? His excitement was intense. The stillness of her figure, its youth, its absorption in despair, in longing, in--itself. He would always remember it, moonlit like that; and the faint sweet reek of the river and the shivering of the willow leaves. She had everything in the world that he could give her, except the one thing that she could not have because of him! The perversity of things hurt him at that moment, as might a fish-bone in his throat.

Then, with an infinite relief, he saw her turn back toward the house. What could he give her to make amends? Pearls, travel, horses, other young men--anything she wanted--that he might lose the memory of her young figure lonely by the water! There! She had set that tune going again! Why--it was a mania! Dark, thrumming, faint, travelling from the house. It was as though she had said: "If I can't have something to keep me going, I shall die of this!" Soames dimly understood. Well, if it helped her, let her keep it thrumming on all night! And, mousing back through the fruit garden, he regained the verandah. Though he meant to go in and speak to her now, he still hesitated, not knowing what to say, trying hard to recall how it felt to be thwarted in love. He ought to know, ought to remember--and he could not! Gone--all real recollection; except that it had hurt him horribly. In this blankness he stood passing his handkerchief over hands and lips, which were very dry. By craning his head he could just see Fleur, standing with her back to that piano still grinding out its tune, her arms tight crossed on her breast, a lighted cigarette between her lips, whose smoke half veiled her face. The expression on it was strange to Soames, the eyes shone and stared, and every feature was alive with a sort of wretched scorn and anger. Once or twice he had seen Annette look like that--the face was too vivid, too naked, not his daughter's at that moment. And he dared not go in, realising the futility of any attempt at consolation. He sat down in the shadow of the ingle-nook.

Monstrous trick, that Fate had played him! Nemesis! That old unhappy marriage! And in God's name-why? How was he to know, when he wanted Irene so violently, and she consented to be his, that she would never love him? The tune died and was renewed, and died again, and still Soames sat in the shadow, waiting for he knew not what. The fag of Fleur's cigarette, flung through the window, fell on the grass; he watched it glowing, burning itself out. The moon had freed herself above the poplars, and poured her unreality on the garden. Comfortless light, mysterious, withdrawn--like the beauty of that woman who had never loved him--dappling the nemesias and the stocks with a vesture not of earth. Flowers! And his flower so unhappy! Ah! Why could one not put happiness into Local Loans, gild its edges, insure it against going down?

Light had ceased to flow out now from the drawing-room window. All was silent and dark in there. Had she gone up? He rose, and, tiptoeing, peered in. It seemed so! He entered. The verandah kept the moonlight out; and at first he could see nothing but the outlines of furniture blacker than the darkness. He groped toward the farther window to shut it. His foot struck a chair, and he heard a gasp. There she was, curled and crushed into the corner of the sofa! His hand hovered. Did she want his consolation? He stood, gazing at that ball of crushed frills and hair and graceful youth, trying to burrow its way out of sorrow. How leave her there? At last he touched her hair, and said:

"Come, darling, better go to bed. I'll make it up to you, somehow." How fatuous! But what could he have said?

IX

UNDER THE OAK-TREE

When their visitor had disappeared Jon and his mother stood without speaking, till he said suddenly:

"I ought to have seen him out."

But Soames was already walking down the drive, and Jon went upstairs to his father's studio, not trusting himself to go back.

The expression on his mother's face confronting the man she had once been married to, had sealed a resolution growing within him ever since she left him the night before. It had put the finishing touch of reality. To marry Fleur would be to hit his mother in the face; to betray his dead father! It was no good! Jon had the least resentful of natures. He bore his parents no grudge in this hour of his distress. For one so young there was a rather strange power in him of seeing things in some sort of proportion. It was worse for Fleur, worse for his mother even, than it was for him. Harder than to give up was to be given up, or to be the cause of some one you loved giving up for you. He must not, would not behave grudgingly! While he stood watching the tardy sunlight, he had again that sudden vision of the world which had come to him the night before. Sea on sea, country on country, millions on millions of people, all with their own lives, energies, joys, griefs, and suffering--all with things they had to give up, and separate struggles for existence. Even though he might be willing to give up all else for the one thing he couldn't have, he would be a fool to think his feelings mattered much in so vast a world, and to behave like a cry-baby or a cad. He pictured the people who had nothing--the millions who had given up life in the War, the millions whom the War had left with life and little else; the hungry children he had read of, the shattered men; people in prison, every kind of unfortunate. And--they did not help him much. If one had to miss a meal, what comfort in the knowledge that many others had to miss it too? There was more distraction in the thought of getting away out into this vast world of which he knew nothing yet. He could not go on staying here, walled in and sheltered, with everything so slick and comfortable, and nothing to do but brood and think what might have been. He could not go back to Wansdon, and the memories of Fleur. If he saw her again he could not trust himself; and if he stayed here or went back there, he would surely see her. While they were within reach of each other that must happen. To go far away and quickly was the only thing to do. But, however much he loved his mother, he did not want to go away with her. Then feeling that was brutal, he made up his mind desperately to propose that they should go to Italy. For two hours in that melancholy room he tried to master himself, then dressed solemnly for dinner.

His mother had done the same. They ate little, at some length, and talked of his father's catalogue. The show was arranged for October, and beyond clerical detail there was nothing more to do.

After dinner she put on a cloak and they went out; walked a little, talked a little, till they were standing silent at last beneath the oak-tree. Ruled by the thought: 'If I show anything, I show all,' Jon put his arm through hers and said quite casually:

"Mother, let's go to Italy."

Irene pressed his arm, and said as casually:

"It would be very nice; but I've been thinking you ought to see and do more than you would if I were with you."

"But then you'd be alone."

"I was once alone for more than twelve years. Besides, I should like to be here for the opening of Father's show."

Jon's grip tightened round her arm; he was not deceived.

"You couldn't stay here all by yourself; it's too big."

"Not here, perhaps. In London, and I might go to Paris, after the show opens. You ought to have a year at least, Jon, and see the world."

"Yes, I'd like to see the world and rough it. But I don't want to leave you all alone."

"My dear, I owe you that at least. If it's for your good, it'll be for mine. Why not start tomorrow? You've got your passport."

"Yes; if I'm going it had better be at once. Only--Mother--if--if I wanted to stay out somewhere--America or anywhere, would you mind coming presently?"

"Wherever and whenever you send for me. But don't send until you really want me."

Jon drew a deep breath.

"I feel England's choky."

They stood a few minutes longer under the oak-tree--looking out to where the grand stand at Epsom was veiled in evening. The branches kept the moonlight from them, so that it only fell everywhere else-- over the fields and far away, and on the windows of the creepered house behind, which soon would be to let.

X

FLEUR'S WEDDING

The October paragraphs describing the wedding of Fleur Forsyte to Michael Mont hardly conveyed the symbolic significance of this event. In the union of the great-granddaughter of "Superior Dosset" with the heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger of class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm. The time had come when the Forsytes might resign their natural resentment against a "flummery" not theirs by birth, and accept it as the still more natural due of their possessive instincts. Besides, they had to mount to make room for all those so much more newly rich. In that quiet but tasteful ceremony in Hanover Square, and afterward among the furniture in Green Street, it had been impossible for those not in the know to distinguish the Forsyte troop from the Mont contingent--so far away was "Superior Dosset" now. Was there, in the crease of his trousers, the expression of his moustache, his accent, or the shine on his top-hat, a pin to choose between Soames and the ninth baronet himself? Was not Fleur as self- possessed, quick, glancing, pretty, and hard as the likeliest Muskham, Mont, or Charwell filly present? If anything, the Forsytes had it in dress and looks and manners. They had become "upper class" and now their name would be formally recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the melting-pot--was still a question so moot that it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater Road--so Francie had reported. It was whispered, too, that this young Mont was a sort of socialist--strangely wise of him, and in the nature of insurance, considering the days they lived in. There was no uneasiness on that score. The landed classes produced that sort of amiable foolishness at times, turned to safe uses and confined to theory. As George remarked to his sister Francie: "They'll soon be having puppies--that'll give him pause."

The church with white flowers and something blue in the middle of the East window looked extremely chaste, as though endeavouring to counteract the somewhat lurid phraseology of a Service calculated to keep the thoughts of all on puppies. Forsytes, Haymans, Tweetymans, sat in the left aisle; Monts, Charwells; Muskhams in the right; while a sprinkling of Fleur's fellow-sufferers at school, and of Mont's fellow-sufferers in, the War, gaped indiscriminately from either side, and three maiden ladies, who had dropped in on their way from Skyward's brought up the rear, together with two Mont retainers and Fleur's old nurse. In the unsettled state of the country as full a house as could be expected.

Mrs. Val Dartie, who sat with her husband in the third row, squeezed his hand more than once during the performance. To her, who knew the plot of this tragi-comedy, its most dramatic moment was well-nigh painful. 'I wonder if Jon knows by instinct,' she thought--Jon, out in British Columbia. She had received a letter from him only that morning which had made her smile and say:

"Jon's in British Columbia, Val, because he wants to be in California. He thinks it's too nice there."

"Oh!" said Val, "so he's beginning to see a joke again."

"He's bought some land and sent for his mother."

"What on earth will she do out there?"

"All she cares about is Jon. Do you still think it a happy release?"

Val's shrewd eyes narrowed to grey pin-points between their dark lashes.

"Fleur wouldn't have suited him a bit. She's not bred right."

"Poor little Fleur!" sighed Holly. Ah! it was strange--this marriage. The young man, Mont, had caught her on the rebound, of course, in the reckless mood of one whose ship has just gone down. Such a plunge could not but be--as Val put it--an outside chance. There was little to be told from the back view of her young cousin's veil, and Holly's eyes reviewed the general aspect of this Christian wedding. She, who had made a love-match which had been successful, had a horror of unhappy marriages. This might not be one in the end- -but it was clearly a toss-up; and to consecrate a toss-up in this fashion with manufactured unction before a crowd of fashionable free- thinkers--for who thought otherwise than freely, or not at all, when they were "dolled" up--seemed to her as near a sin as one could find in an age which had abolished them. Her eyes wandered from the prelate in his robes (a Charwell-the Forsytes had not as yet produced a prelate) to Val, beside her, thinking--she was certain--of the Mayfly filly at fifteen to one for the Cambridgeshire. They passed on and caught the profile of the ninth baronet, in counterfeitment of the kneeling process. She could just see the neat ruck above his knees where he had pulled his trousers up, and thought: 'Val's forgotten to pull up his!' Her eyes passed to the pew in front of her, where Winifred's substantial form was gowned with passion, and on again to Soames and Annette kneeling side by side. A little smile came on her lips--Prosper Profond, back from the South Seas of the Channel, would be kneeling too, about six rows behind. Yes! This was a funny "small" business, however it turned out; still it was in a proper church and would be in the proper papers to-morrow morning.

They had begun a hymn; she could hear the ninth baronet across the aisle, singing of the hosts of Midian. Her little finger touched Val's thumb--they were holding the same hymn-book--and a tiny thrill passed through her, preserved--from twenty years ago. He stooped and whispered:

"I say, d'you remember the rat?" The rat at their wedding in Cape Colony, which had cleaned its whiskers behind the table at the Registrar's! And between her little and third forgers she squeezed his thumb hard.

The hymn was over, the prelate had begun to deliver his discourse. He told them of the dangerous times they lived in, and the awful conduct of the House of Lords in connection with divorce. They were all soldiers--he said--in the trenches under the poisonous gas of the Prince of Darkness, and must be manful. The purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness.

An imp danced in Holly's eyes--Val's eyelashes were meeting. Whatever happened; he must not snore. Her finger and thumb closed on his thigh till he stirred uneasily.

The discourse was over, the danger past. They were signing in the vestry; and general relaxation had set in.

A voice behind her said:

"Will she stay the course?"

"Who's that?" she whispered.

"Old George Forsyte!"

"I never know!" said Soames slowly; "you don't confide in me."

"I would, if you'd help me, dear."

"Perhaps I shall."

Fleur clasped her hands. "Oh! darling--when one wants a thing fearfully, one doesn't think of other people. Don't be angry with me."

Soames put out his hand, as if pushing away an aspersion.

"I'm cogitating," he said. What on earth had made him use a word like that! "Has young Mont been bothering you again?"

Fleur smiled. "Oh! Michael! He's always bothering; but he's such a good sort--I don't mind him."

"Well," said Soames, "I'm tired; I shall go and have a nap before dinner."

He went up to his picture-gallery, lay down on the couch there, and closed his eyes. A terrible responsibility this girl of his--whose mother was--ah! what was she? A terrible responsibility! Help her-- how could he help her? He could not alter the fact that he was her father. Or that Irene--! What was it young Mont had said--some nonsense about the possessive instinct--shutters up-- To let? Silly!

The sultry air, charged with a scent of meadow-sweet, of river and roses, closed on his senses, drowsing them.

V

THE FIXED IDEA

The fixed idea," which has outrun more constables than any other form of human disorder, has never more speed and stamina than when it takes the avid guise of love. To hedges and ditches, and doors, to humans without ideas fixed or otherwise, to perambulators and the contents sucking their fixed ideas, even to the other sufferers from this fast malady--the fixed idea of love pays no attention. It runs with eyes turned inward to its own light, oblivious of all other stars. Those with the fixed ideas that human happiness depends on their art, on vivisecting dogs, on hating foreigners, on paying supertax, on remaining Ministers, on making wheels go round, on preventing their neighbours from being divorced, on conscientious objection, Greek roots, Church dogma, paradox and superiority to everybody else, with other forms of ego-mania--all are unstable compared with him or her whose fixed idea is the possession of some her or him. And though Fleur, those chilly summer days, pursued the scattered life of a little Forsyte whose frocks are paid for, and whose business is pleasure, she was--as Winifred would have said in the latest fashion of speech--"honest to God" indifferent to it all. She wished and wished for the moon, which sailed in cold skies above the river or the Green Park when she went to Town. She even kept Jon's letters, covered with pink silk, on her heart, than which in days when corsets were so low, sentiment so despised, and chests so out of fashion, there could, perhaps, have been no greater proof of the fixity of her idea.

After hearing of his father's death, she wrote to Jon, and received his answer three days later on her return from a river picnic. It was his first letter since their meeting at June's. She opened it with misgiving, and read it with dismay.

"Since I saw you I've heard everything about the past. I won't tell it you--I think you knew when we met at June's. She says you did. If you did, Fleur, you ought to have told me. I expect you only heard your father's side of it. I have heard my mother's. It's dreadful. Now that she's so sad I can't do anything to hurt her more. Of course, I long for you all day, but I don't believe now that we shall ever come together--there's something too strong pulling us apart."

So! Her deception had found her out. But Jon--she felt--had forgiven that. It was what he said of his mother which caused the guttering in her heart and the weak sensation in her legs.

Her first impulse was to reply--her second, not to reply. These impulses were constantly renewed in the days which followed, while desperation grew within her. She was not her father's child for nothing. The tenacity which had at once made and undone Soames was her backbone, too, frilled and embroidered by French grace and quickness. Instinctively she conjugated the verb "to have" always with the pronoun "I." She concealed, however, all signs of her growing desperation, and pursued such river pleasures as the winds and rain of a disagreeable July permitted, as if she had no care in the world; nor did any "sucking baronet" ever neglect the business of a publisher more consistently than her attendant spirit, Michael Mont.

To Soames she was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. Almost--because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What was she thinking and brooding over into small hours when she ought to have been asleep? But he dared not ask what was in her mind; and, since that one little talk in the billiard- room, she said nothing to him.

In this taciturn condition of affairs it chanced that Winifred invited them to lunch and to go afterward to "a most amusing little play, 'The Beggar's Opera"' and would they bring a man to make four? Soames, whose attitude toward theatres was to go to nothing, accepted, because Fleur's attitude was to go to everything. They motored up, taking Michael Mont, who, being in his seventh heaven, was found by Winifred "very amusing." "The Beggar's Opera" puzzled Soames. The people were very unpleasant, the whole thing very cynical. Winifred was "intrigued "--by the dresses. The music, too, did not displease her. At the Opera, the night before, she had arrived too early for the Russian Ballet, and found the stage occupied by singers, for a whole hour pale or apoplectic from terror lest by some dreadful inadvertence they might drop into a tune. Michael Mont was enraptured with the whole thing. And all three wondered what Fleur was thinking of it. But Fleur was not thinking of it. Her fixed idea stood on the stage and sang with Polly Peachum, mimed with Filch, danced with Jenny Diver, postured with Lucy Lockit, kissed, trolled, and cuddled with Macheath. Her lips might smile, her hands applaud, but the comic old masterpiece made no more impression on her than if it had been pathetic, like a modern "Revue." When they embarked in the car to return, she ached because Jon was not sitting next her instead of Michael Mont. When, at some jolt, the young man's arm touched hers as if by accident, she only thought: 'If that were Jon's arm!' When his cheerful voice, tempered by her proximity, murmured above the sound of the car's progress, she smiled and answered, thinking: 'If that were Jon's voice!' and when once he said, "Fleur, you look a perfect angel in that dress!" she answered, "Oh, do you like it? thinking, 'If only Jon could see it!'

During this drive she took a resolution. She would go to Robin Hill and see him--alone; she would take the car, without word beforehand to him or to her father. It was nine days since his letter, and she could wait no longer. On Monday she would go! The decision made her well disposed toward young Mont. With something to look forward to she could afford to tolerate and respond. He might stay to dinner; propose to her as usual; dance with her, press her hand, sigh--do what he liked. He was only a nuisance when he interfered with her fixed idea. She was even sorry for him so far as it was possible to be sorry for anybody but herself just now. At dinner he seemed to talk more wildly than usual about what he called "the death of the close borough"--she paid little attention, but her father seemed paying a good deal, with the smile on his face which meant opposition, if not anger.

"The younger generation doesn't think as you do, sir; does it, Fleur?"

Fleur shrugged her shoulders--the younger generation was just Jon, and she did not know what he was thinking.

"Young people will think as I do when they're my age, Mr. Mont. Human nature doesn't change."

"I admit that, sir; but the forms of thought change with the times. The pursuit of self-interest is a form of thought that's going out."

"Indeed! To mind one's own business is not a form of thought, Mr. Mont, it's an instinct."

Yes, when Jon was the business!

"But what is one's business, sir? That's the point. Everybody's business is going to be one's business. Isn't it, Fleur?"

Fleur only smiled.

"If not," added young Mont, "there'll be blood."

"People have talked like that from time immemorial"

"But you'll admit, sir, that the sense of property is dying out?"

"I should say increasing among those who have none."

"Well, look at me! I'm heir to an entailed estate. I don't want the thing; I'd cut the entail to-morrow."

"You're not married, and you don't know what you're talking about."

Fleur saw the young man's eyes turn rather piteously upon her.

"Do you really mean that marriage--?" he began.

"Society is built on marriage," came from between her father's close lips; "marriage and its consequences. Do you want to do away with it?"

Young Mont made a distracted gesture. Silence brooded over the dinner table, covered with spoons bearing the Forsyte crest--a pheasant proper--under the electric light in an alabaster globe. And outside, the river evening darkened, charged with heavy moisture and sweet scents.

'Monday,' thought Fleur; 'Monday!'

VI

DESPERATE

The weeks which followed the death of his father were sad and empty to the only Jolyon Forsyte left. The necessary forms and ceremonies- -the reading of the Will, valuation of the estate, distribution of the legacies--were enacted over the head, as it were, of one not yet of age. Jolyon was cremated. By his special wish no one attended that ceremony, or wore black for him. The succession of his property, controlled to some extent by old Jolyon's Will, left his widow in possession of Robin Hill, with two thousand five hundred pounds a year for life. Apart from this the two Wills worked together in some complicated way to insure that each of Jolyon's three children should have an equal share in their grandfather's and father's property in the future as in the present, save only that Jon, by virtue of his sex, would have control of his capital when he was twenty-one, while June and Holly would only have the spirit of theirs, in order that their children might have the body after them. If they had no children, it would all come to Jon if he outlived them; and since June was fifty, and Holly nearly forty, it was considered in Lincoln's Inn Fields that but for the cruelty of income tax, young Jon would be as warm a man as his grandfather when he died. All this was nothing to Jon, and little enough to his mother. It was June who did everything needful for one who had left his affairs in perfect order. When she had gone, and those two were alone again in the great house, alone with death drawing them together, and love driving them apart, Jon passed very painful days secretly disgusted and disappointed with himself. His mother would look at him with such a patient sadness which yet had in it an instinctive pride, as if she were reserving her defence. If she smiled he was angry that his answering smile should be so grudging and unnatural. He did not judge or condemn her; that was all too remote--indeed, the idea of doing so had never come to him. No! he was grudging and unnatural because he couldn't have what he wanted be cause of her. There was one alleviation--much to do in connection with his father's career, which could not be safely entrusted to June, though she had offered to undertake it. Both Jon and his mother had felt that if she took his portfolios, unexhibited drawings and unfinished matter, away with her, the work would encounter such icy blasts from Paul Post and other frequenters of her studio, that it would soon be frozen out even of her warm heart. On its old- fashioned plane and of its kind the work was good, and they could not bear the thought of its subjection to ridicule. A one-man exhibition of his work was the least testimony they could pay to one they had loved; and on preparation for this they spent many hours together. Jon came to have a curiously increased respect for his father. The quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent into something really individual was disclosed by these researches. There was a great mass of work with a rare continuity of growth in depth and reach of vision. Nothing certainly went very deep, or reached very high--but such as the work was, it was thorough, conscientious, and complete. And, remembering his father's utter absence of "side" or self-assertion, the chaffing humility with which he had always spoken of his own efforts, ever calling himself "an amateur," Jon could not help feeling that he had never really known his father. To take himself seriously, yet never bore others by letting them know that he did so, seemed to have been his ruling principle. There was something in this which appealed to the boy, and made him heartily endorse his mother's comment: "He had true refinement; he couldn't help thinking of others, whatever he did. And when he took a resolution which went counter, he did it with the minimum of defiance--not like the Age, is it? Twice in his life he had to go against everything; and yet it never made him bitter." Jon saw tears running down her face, which she at once turned away from him. She was so quiet about her loss that sometimes he had thought she didn't feel it much. Now, as he looked at her, he felt how far he fell short of the reserve power and dignity in both his father and his mother. And, stealing up to her, he put his arm round her waist. She kissed him swiftly, but with a sort of passion, and went out of the room.

The studio, where they had been sorting and labelling, had once been Holly's schoolroom, devoted to her silkworms, dried lavender, music, and other forms of instruction. Now, at the end of July, despite its northern and eastern aspects, a warm and slumberous air came in between the long-faded lilac linen curtains. To redeem a little the departed glory, as of a field that is golden and gone, clinging to a room which its master has left, Irene had placed on the paint-stained table a bowl of red roses. This, and Jolyon's favourite cat, who still clung to the deserted habitat, were the pleasant spots in that dishevelled, sad workroom. Jon, at the north window, sniffing air mysteriously scented with warm strawberries, heard a car drive up. The lawyers again about some nonsense! Why did that scent so make one ache? And where did it come from--there were no strawberry beds on this side of the house. Instinctively he took a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, and wrote down some broken words. A warmth began spreading in his chest; he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Presently he had jotted this:

"If I could make a little song A little song to soothe my heart! I'd make it all of little things The plash of water, rub of wings, The puffing-off of dandies crown, The hiss of raindrop spilling down, The purr of cat, the trill of bird, And ev'ry whispering I've heard >From willy wind in leaves and grass, And all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender and as light As flower, or butterfly in flight; And when I saw it opening, I'd let it fly and sing!"

He was still muttering it over to himself at the window, when he heard his name called, and, turning round, saw Fleur. At that amazing apparition, he made at first no movement and no sound, while her clear vivid glance ravished his heart. Then he went forward to the table, saying, "How nice of you to come!" and saw her flinch as if he had thrown something at her.

"I asked for you," she said, "and they showed me up here. But I can go away again."

Jon clutched the paint-stained table. Her face and figure in its frilly frock photographed itself with such startling vividness upon his eyes, that if she had sunk through the floor he must still have seen her.

"I know I told you a lie, Jon. But I told it out of love."

"Yes, oh! yes! That's nothing!"

"I didn't answer your letter. What was the use--there wasn't anything to answer. I wanted to see you instead." She held out both her hands, and Jon grasped them across the table. He tried to say something, but all his attention was given to trying not to hurt her hands. His own felt so hard and hers so soft. She said almost defiantly:

"That old story--was it so very dreadful?"

"Yes." In his voice, too, there was a note of defiance.

She dragged her hands away. "I didn't think in these days boys were tied to their mothers' apron-strings."

Jon's chin went up as if he had been struck.

"Oh! I didn't mean it, Jon. What a horrible thing to say!" Swiftly she came close to him. "Jon, dear; I didn't mean it."

"All right."

She had put her two hands on his shoulder, and her forehead down on them; the brim of her hat touched his neck, and he felt it quivering. But, in a sort of paralysis, he made no response. She let go of his shoulder and drew away.

"Well, I'll go, if you don't want me. But I never thought you'd have given me up."

"I haven't," cried Jon, coming suddenly to life. "I can't. I'll try again."

Her eyes gleamed, she swayed toward him. "Jon--I love you! Don't give me up! If you do, I don't know what--I feel so desperate. What does it matter--all that past-compared with this?"

She clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. But while he kissed her he saw, the sheets of that letter fallen down on the floor of his bedroom--his father's white dead face--his mother kneeling before it. Fleur's whispered, "Make her! Promise! Oh! Jon, try!" seemed childish in his ear. He felt curiously old.

"I promise!" he muttered. "Only, you don't understand."

"She wants to spoil our lives, just because--"

"Yes, of what?"

Again that challenge in his voice, and she did not answer. Her arms tightened round him, and he returned her kisses; but even while he yielded, the poison worked in him, the poison of the letter. Fleur did not know, she did not understand--she misjudged his mother; she came from the enemy's camp! So lovely, and he loved her so--yet, even in her embrace, he could not help the memory of Holly's words: "I think she has a 'having' nature," and his mother's "My darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself!"

When she was gone like a passionate dream, leaving her image on his eyes, her kisses on his lips, such an ache in his heart, Jon leaned in the window, listening to the car bearing her away. Still the scent as of warm strawberries, still the little summer sounds that should make his song; still all the promise of youth and happiness in sighing, floating, fluttering July--and his heart torn; yearning strong in him; hope high in him yet with its eyes cast down, as if ashamed. The miserable task before him! If Fleur was desperate, so was he--watching the poplars swaying, the white clouds passing, the sunlight on the grass.

He waited till evening, till after their almost silent dinner, till his mother had played to him and still he waited, feeling that she knew what he was waiting to say. She kissed him and went up-stairs, and still he lingered, watching the moonlight and the moths, and that unreality of colouring which steals along and stains a summer night. And he would have given anything to be back again in the past--barely three months back; or away forward, years, in the future. The present with this dark cruelty of a decision, one way or the other, seemed impossible. He realised now so much more keenly what his mother felt than he had at first; as if the story in that letter had been a poisonous germ producing a kind of fever of partisanship, so that he really felt there were two camps, his mother's and his-- Fleur's and her father's. It might be a dead thing, that old tragic ownership and enmity, but dead things were poisonous till time had cleaned them away. Even his love felt tainted, less illusioned, more of the earth, and with a treacherous lurking doubt lest Fleur, like her father, might want to own; not articulate, just a stealing haunt, horribly unworthy, which crept in and about the ardour of his memories, touched with its tarnishing breath the vividness and grace of that charmed face and figure--a doubt, not real enough to convince him of its presence, just real enough to deflower a perfect faith. And perfect faith, to Jon, not yet twenty, was essential. He still had Youth's eagerness to give with both hands, to take with neither - to give lovingly to one who had his own impulsive generosity. Surely she had! He got up from the window-seat and roamed in the big grey ghostly room, whose walls were hung with silvered canvas. This house his father said in that death-bed letter--had been built for his mother to live in--with Fleur's father! He put out his hand in the half-dark, as if to grasp the shadowy hand of the dead. He clenched, trying to feel the thin vanished fingers of his father; to squeeze them, and reassure him that he-he was on his father's side. Tears, prisoned within him, made his eyes feel dry and hot. He went back to the window. It was warmer, not so eerie, more comforting outside, where the moon hung golden, three days off full; the freedom of the night was comforting. If only Fleur and he had met on some desert island without a past--and Nature for their house! Jon had still his high regard for desert islands, where breadfruit grew, and the water was blue above the coral. The night was deep, was free--there was enticement in it; a lure, a promise, a refuge from entanglement, and love! Milksop tied to his mother's...! His cheeks burned. He shut the window, drew curtains over it, switched off the lighted sconce, and went up-stairs.

The door of his room was open, the light turned up; his mother, still in her evening gown, was standing at the window. She turned and said:

"Sit down, Jon; let's talk." She sat down on the window-seat, Jon on his bed. She had her profile turned to him, and the beauty and grace of her figure, the delicate line of the brow, the nose, the neck, the strange and as it were remote refinement of her, moved him. His mother never belonged to her surroundings. She came into them from somewhere--as it were! What was she going to say to him, who had in his heart such things to say to her?

"I know Fleur came to-day. I'm not surprised." It was as though she had added: "She is her father's daughter!" And Jon's heart hardened. Irene went on quietly:

"I have Father's letter. I picked it up that night and kept it. Would you like it back, dear?"

Jon shook his head.

"I had read it, of course, before he gave it to you. It didn't quite do justice to my criminality."

'Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

"He put it very sweetly, but I know that in marrying Fleur's father without love I did a dreadful thing. An unhappy marriage, Jon, can play such havoc with other lives besides one's own. You are fearfully young, my darling, and fearfully loving. Do you think you can possibly be happy with this girl?"

Staring at her dark eyes, darker now from pain, Jon answered

"Yes; oh! yes--if you could be."

Irene smiled.

"Admiration of beauty and longing for possession are not love. If yours were another case like mine, Jon--where the deepest things are stifled; the flesh joined, and the spirit at war!"

"Why should it, Mother? You think she must be like her father, but she's not. I've seen him."

Again the smile came on Irene's lips, and in Jon something wavered; there was such irony and experience in that smile.

"You are a giver, Jon; she is a taker."

That unworthy doubt, that haunting uncertainty again! He said with vehemence:

"She isn't--she isn't. It's only because I can't bear to make you unhappy, Mother, now that Father--" He thrust his fists against his forehead.

Irene got up.

"I told you that night, dear, not to mind me. I meant it. Think of yourself and your own happiness! I can stand what's left--I've brought it on myself."

Again the word "Mother!" burst from Jon's lips.

She came over to him and put her hands over his.

"Do you feel your head, darling?"

Jon shook it. What he felt was in his chest--a sort of tearing asunder of the tissue there, by the two loves.

"I shall always love you the same, Jon, whatever you do. You won't lose anything." She smoothed his hair gently, and walked away.

He heard the door shut; and, rolling over on the bed, lay, stifling his breath, with an awful held-up feeling within him.

VII

EMBASSY

Enquiring for her at tea time Soames learned that Fleur had been out in the car since two. Three hours! Where had she gone? Up to London without a word to him? He had never become quite reconciled with cars. He had embraced them in principle--like the born empiricist, or Forsyte, that he was--adopting each symptom of progress as it came along with: "Well, we couldn't do without them now." But in fact he found them tearing, great, smelly things. Obliged by Annette to have one--a Rollhard with pearl-grey cushions, electric light, little mirrors, trays for the ashes of cigarettes, flower vases--all smelling of petrol and stephanotis--he regarded it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague Dartie. The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life. As modern life became faster, looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in thought and language like his father James before him. He was almost aware of it himself. Pace and progress pleased him less and less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour. On one occasion that fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man. Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many people would have stopped to put up with it. He had been sorry for the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian hadn't been so outrageous. With four hours fast becoming five, and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she? Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing--no dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity of any kind! What should he do if she were not back by nightfall?

At a quarter to eight he heard the car. A great weight lifted from off his heart; he hurried down. She was getting out--pale and tired- looking, but nothing wrong. He met her in the hall.

"You've frightened me. Where have you been?"

"To Robin Hill. I'm sorry, dear. I had to go; I'll tell you afterward." And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.

Soames waited in the drawing-room. To Robin Hill! What did that portend?

It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner--consecrated to the susceptibilities of the butler. The agony of nerves Soames had been through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation. Life was a queer business. There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not spent forty years in building up security- always something one couldn't get on terms with! In the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette. She was coming back in a fortnight. He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there. And he was glad that he did not. Her absence had been a relief. Out of sight was out of mind! And now she was coming back. Another worry! And the Bolderby Old Crome was gone--Dumetrius had got it-- all because that anonymous letter had put it out of his thoughts. He furtively remarked the strained look on his daughter's face, as if she too were gazing at a picture that she couldn't buy. He almost wished the War back. Worries didn't seem, then, quite so worrying. >From the caress in her voice, the look on her face, he became certain that she wanted something from him, uncertain whether it would be wise of him to give it her. He pushed his savoury away uneaten, and even joined her in a cigarette.

After dinner she set the electric piano-player going. And he augured the worst when she sat down on a cushion footstool at his knee, and put her hand on his.

"Darling, be nice to me. I had to see Jon--he wrote to me. He's going to try what he can do with his mother. But I've been thinking. It's really in your hands, Father. If you'd persuade her that it doesn't mean renewing the past in any way! That I shall stay yours, and Jon will stay hers; that you need never see him or her, and she need never see you or me! Only you could persuade her, dear, because only you could promise. One can't promise for other people. Surely it wouldn't be too awkward for you to see her just this once now that Jon's father is dead?"

"Too awkward?" Soames repeated. "The whole thing's preposterous."

"You know," said Fleur, without looking up, "you wouldn't mind seeing her, really."

Soames was silent. Her words had expressed a truth too deep for him to admit. She slipped her fingers between his own--hot, slim, eager, they clung there. This child of his would corkscrew her way into a brick wall!

"What am I to do if you won't, Father?" she said very softly.

"I'll do anything for your happiness," said Soanies; "but this isn't for your happiness."

"Oh! it is; it is!"

"It'll only stir things up," he said grimly.

"But they are stirred up. The thing is to quiet them. To make her feel that this is just our lives, and has nothing to do with yours or hers. You can do it, Father, I know you can."

"You know a great deal, then," was Soames' glum answer.

"If you will, Jon and I will wait a year--two years if you like."

"It seems to me," murmured Soames, "that you care nothing about what I feel."

Fleur pressed his hand against her cheek.

"I do, darling. But you wouldn't like me to be awfully miserable."

How she wheedled to get her ends! And trying with all his might to think she really cared for him--he was not sure--not sure. All she cared for was this boy! Why should he help her to get this boy, who was killing her affection for himself? Why should he? By the laws of the Forsytes it was foolish! There was nothing to be had out of it--nothing! To give her to that boy! To pass her into the enemy's camp, under the influence of the woman who had injured him so deeply! Slowly--inevitably--he would lose this flower of his life! And suddenly he was conscious that his hand was wet. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't bear her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he said, "I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her. And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went up to the piano-player-- making that noise! It ran down, as he reached it, with a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The Harmonious Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him miserable when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it played "The Wild, Wild Women," and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was no longer in black velvet with a sky blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!' And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.

He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. Pleasant memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that it had clinched their union. And, now, he was going to clinch the union of that boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought, 'to have such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very much as he remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London! Some one evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was said and done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a "Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right, perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of the French. One's bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard peasant proprietors described as a pig-headed lot; had heard young Mont call his father a pigheaded Morning Poster--disrespectful young devil. Well, there were worse things than being pig-headed or reading the Morning Post. There was Profond and his tribe, and all these Labour chaps, and loud-mouthed politicians and 'wild, wild women'! A lot of worse things! And suddenly Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky. Sheer nerves at the meeting before him! As Aunt Juley might have said--quoting "Superior Dosset"--his nerves were "in a proper fautigue." He could see the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all! He began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of investment. He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless beauty, incarnate. His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself, would have been brother and sister. That wretched tune, "The Wild, Wild Women," kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run there as a rule. Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought: 'How they've grown; I had them planted!' A maid answered his ring.

"Will you say--Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter."

Lundie relates an example of protracted gestation of eleven months, in which an anencephalous fetus was born; and Martin of Birmingham describes a similar case of ten and a half months' duration. Raux-Tripier has seen protraction to the thirteenth month. Enguin reports an observation of an accouchement of twins after a pregnancy that had been prolonged for eleven months. Resnikoff mentions a pregnancy of eleven months' duration in an anemic secundipara. The case had been under his observation from the beginning of pregnancy; the patient would not submit to artificial termination at term, which he advised. After a painful labor of twenty-four hours a macerated and decomposed child was born, together with a closely-adherent placenta. Tarnier reports an instance of partus serotinus in which the product of conception was carried in the uterus forty days after term. The fetus was macerated but not putrid, and the placenta had undergone fatty degeneration. At a recent meeting of the Chicago Gynecological Society, Dr. F. A. Stahl reported the case of a German-Bohemian woman in which the fifth pregnancy terminated three hundred and two days after the last menstruation. Twenty days before there had occurred pains similar to those of labor, but they gradually ceased. The sacral promontory was exaggerated, and the anteroposterior pelvic diameter of the inlet in consequence diminished. The fetus was large and occupied the first position. Version was with difficulty effected and the passage of the after-coming head through the superior strait required expression and traction, during which the child died. The mother suffered a deep laceration of the perineum involving an inch of the wall of the rectum.

Among others reporting instances of protracted pregnancy are Collins, eleven months; Desbrest, eighteen months; Henderson, fifteen months; Jefferies, three hundred and fifty-eight days, and De la Vergne gives the history of a woman who carried an infant in her womb for twenty-nine months; this case may possibly belong under the head of fetus long retained in the uterus.

Unconscious Pregnancy.--There are numerous instances of women who have had experience in pregnancy unconsciously going almost to the moment of delivery, yet experiencing none of the usual accompanying symptoms of this condition. Crowell speaks of a woman of good social position who had been married seven years, and who had made extensive preparations for a long journey, when she was seized with a "bilious colic," and, to her dismay and surprise, a child was born before the arrival of the doctor summoned on account of her sudden colic and her inability to retain her water. A peculiar feature of this case was the fact that mental disturbance set in immediately afterward, and the mother became morbid and had to be removed to an asylum, but recovered in a few months. Tanner saw a woman of forty-two who had been suffering with abdominal pains. She had been married three years and had never been pregnant. Her catamenia were very scant, but this was attributed to her change of life. She had conceived, had gone to the full term of gestation, and was in labor ten hours without any suspicion of pregnancy. She was successfully delivered of a girl, which occasioned much rejoicing in the household.

Tasker of Kendall's Mills, Me., reports the case of a young married woman calling him for bilious colic. He found the stomach slightly distended and questioned her about the possibility of pregnancy. Both she and her husband informed him that such could not be the case, as her courses had been regular and her waist not enlarged, as she had worn a certain corset all the time. There were no signs of quickening, no change in the breasts, and, in fact, none of the usual signs of pregnancy present. He gave her an opiate, and to her surprise, in about six hours she was the mother of a boy weighing five pounds. Both the mother and child made a good recovery. Duke cites the instance of a woman who supposed that she was not pregnant up to the night of her miscarriage. She had menstruated and was suckling a child sixteen months old. During the night she was attacked with pains resembling those of labor and a fetus slipped into the vagina without any hemorrhage; the placenta came away directly afterward. In this peculiar case the woman was menstruating regularly, suckling a child, and at the same time was unconsciously pregnant.

Isham speaks of a case of unconscious pregnancy in which extremely small twins were delivered at the eighth month. Fox cites an instance of a woman who had borne eight children, and yet unconscious of pregnancy. Merriman speaks of a woman forty years of age who had not borne a child for nine years, but who suddenly gave birth to a stout, healthy boy without being cognizant of pregnancy. Dayral tells of a woman who carried a child all through pregnancy, unconscious of her condition, and who was greatly surprised at its birth. Among the French observers speaking of pregnancy remaining unrecognized by the mother until the period of accouchement, Lozes and Rhades record peculiar cases; and Mouronval relates an instance in which a woman who had borne three children completely ignored the presence of pregnancy until the pains of labor were felt. Fleishman and Munzenthaler also record examples of unconscious pregnancy.

Pseudocyesis.--On the other hand, instances of pregnancy with imaginary symptoms and preparations for birth are sometimes noticed, and many cases are on record. In fact, nearly every text-book on obstetrics gives some space to the subject of pseudocyesis. Suppression of the menses, enlargement of the abdomen, engorgement of the breasts, together with the symptoms produced by the imagination, such as nausea, spasmodic contraction of the abdomen, etc., are for the most part the origin of the cases of pseudocyesis. Of course, many of the cases are not examples of true pseudocyesis, with its interesting phenomena, but instances of malingering for mercenary or other purposes, and some are calculated to deceive the most expert obstetricians by their tricks. Weir Mitchell delineates an interesting case of pseudocyesis as follows: "A woman, young, or else, it may be, at or past the climacteric, eagerly desires a child or is horribly afraid of becoming pregnant. The menses become slight in amount, irregular, and at last cease or not. Meanwhile the abdomen and breasts enlarge, owing to a rapid taking on of fat, and this is far less visible elsewhere. There comes with this excess of fat the most profound conviction of the fact of pregnancy. By and by the child is felt, the physician takes it for granted, and this goes on until the great diagnostician, Time, corrects the delusion. Then the fat disappears with remarkable speed, and the reign of this singular simulation is at an end." In the same article, Dr. Mitchell cites the two following cases under his personal observation: "I was consulted by a lady in regard to a woman of thirty years of age, a nurse in whom she was interested. This person had been married some three years to a very old man possessed of a considerable estate. He died, leaving his wife her legal share and the rest to distant cousins, unless the wife had a child. For two months before he died the woman, who was very anemic, ceased to menstruate. She became sure that she was pregnant, and thereupon took on flesh at a rate and in a way which seemed to justify her belief. Her breasts and abdomen were the chief seats of this overgrowth. The menses did not return, her pallor increased; the child was felt, and every preparation made for delivery. At the eighth month a physician made an examination and assured her of the absence of pregnancy. A second medical opinion confirmed the first, and the tenth month found her of immense size and still positive as to her condition. At the twelfth month her menstrual flow returned, and she became sure it was the early sign of labor. When it passed over she became convinced of her error, and at once dropped weight at the rate of half a pound a day despite every effort to limit the rate of this remarkable loss. At the end of two months she had parted with fifty pounds and was, on the whole, less anemic. At this stage I was consulted by letter, as the woman had become exceedingly hysteric. This briefly stated case, which occurred many years ago, is a fair illustration of my thesis.

"Another instance I saw when in general practice. A lady who had several children and suffered much in her pregnancies passed five years without becoming impregnated. Then she missed a period, and had, as usual, vomiting. She made some wild efforts to end her supposed pregnancy, and failing, acquiesced in her fate. The menses returned at the ninth month and were presumed to mean labor. Meanwhile she vomited, up to the eighth month, and ate little. Nevertheless, she took on fat so as to make the abdomen and breasts immense and to excite unusual attention. No physician examined her until the supposed labor began, when, of course, the truth came out. She was pleased not to have another child, and in her case, as in all the others known to me, the fat lessened as soon as the mind was satisfied as to the non-existence of pregnancy. As I now recall the facts, this woman was not more than two months in getting rid of the excess of adipose tissue. Dr. Hirst tells me he has met with cases of women taking on fat with cessation of the menses, and in which there was also a steady belief in the existence of pregnancy. He has not so followed up these cases as to know if in them the fat fell away with speed when once the patient was assured that no child existed within her."

Hirst, in an article on the difficulties in the diagnosis of pregnancy, gives several excellent photographs showing the close resemblance between several pathologic conditions and the normal distention of the abdomen in pregnancy. A woman who had several children fell sick with a chest-affection, followed by an edema. For fifteen months she was confined to her bed, and had never had connection with her husband during that time. Her menses ceased; her mammae became engorged and discharged a serous lactescent fluid; her belly enlarged, and both she and her physician felt fetal movements in her abdomen. As in her previous pregnancies, she suffered nausea. Naturally, a suspicion as to her virtue came into her husband's mind, but when he considered that she had never left her bed for fifteen months he thought the pregnancy impossible. Still the wife insisted that she was pregnant and was confirmed in the belief by a midwife. The belly continued to increase, and about eleven months after the cessation of the menses she had the pains of labor. Three doctors and an accoucheur were present, and when they claimed that the fetal head presented the husband gave up in despair; but the supposed fetus was born shortly after, and proved to be only a mass of hydatids, with not the sign of a true pregnancy. Girard of Lyons speaks of a female who had been pregnant several times, but again experienced the signs of pregnancy. Her mammae were engorged with a lactescent fluid, and she felt belly-movements like those of a child; but during all this time she had regular menstruation. Her abdomen progressively increased in size, and between the tenth and eleventh months she suffered what she thought to be labor-pains. These false pains ceased upon taking a bath, and with the disappearance of the other signs was dissipated the fallacious idea of pregnancy.

There is mentioned an instance of medicolegal interest of a young girl who showed all the signs of pregnancy and confessed to her parents that she had had commerce with a man. The parents immediately prosecuted the seducer by strenuous legal methods, but when her ninth month came, and after the use of six baths, all the signs of pregnancy vanished. Harvey cites several instances of pseudocyesis, and says we must not rashly determine of the the inordinate birth before the seventh or after the eleventh month. In 1646 a woman, after having laughed heartily at the jests of an ill-bred, covetous clown, was seized with various movements and motions in her belly like those of a child, and these continued for over a month, when the courses appeared again and the movements ceased. The woman was certain that she was pregnant.

The most noteworthy historic case of pseudocyesis is that of Queen Mary of England, or "Bloody Mary," as she was called. To insure the succession of a Catholic heir, she was most desirous of having a son by her consort,

Philip, and she constantly prayed and wished for pregnancy. Finally her menses stopped; the breasts began to enlarge and became discolored around the nipples. She had morning-sickness of a violent nature and her abdomen enlarged. On consultation with the ladies of her court, her opinion of pregnancy was strongly confirmed. Her favorite amusement then was to make baby-clothes and count on her fingers the months of pregnancy. When the end of the ninth month approached, the people were awakened one night by the joyous peals of the bells of London announcing the new heir. An ambassador had been sent to tell the Pope that Mary could feel the new life within her, and the people rushed to St. Paul's Cathedral to listen to the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury describe the baby-prince and give thanks for his deliverance. The spurious labor pains passed away, and after being assured that no real pregnancy existed in her case, Mary went into violent hysterics, and Philip, disgusted with the whole affair, deserted her; then commenced the persecution of the Protestants, which blighted the reign.

Putnam cites the case of a healthy brunet, aged forty, the mother of three children. She had abrupt vertical abdominal movements, so strong as to cause her to plunge and sway from side to side. Her breasts were enlarged, the areolae dark, and the uterus contained an elastic tumor, heavy and rolling under the hand. Her abdomen progressively enlarged to the regular size of matured gestation; but the extrauterine pregnancy, which was supposed to have existed, was not seen at the autopsy, nothing more than an enlarged liver being found. The movement was due to spasmodic movements of the abdominal muscles, the causes being unknown. Madden gives the history of a primipara of twenty-eight, married one year, to whom he was called. On entering the room he was greeted by the midwife, who said she expected the child about 8 P.M. The woman was lying in the usual obstetric position, on the left side, groaning, crying loudly, and pulling hard at a strap fastened to the bed-post. She had a partial cessation of menses, and had complained of tumultuous movements of the child and overflow of milk from the breasts. Examination showed the cervix low down, the os small and circular, and no signs of pregnancy in the uterus. The abdomen was distended with tympanites and the rectum much dilated with accumulated feces. Dr. Madden left her, telling her that she was not pregnant, and when she reappeared at his office in a few days, he reassured her of the nonexistence of pregnancy; she became very indignant, triumphantly squeezed lactescent fluid from her breasts, and, insisting that she could feel fetal movements, left to seek a more sympathetic accoucheur. Underhill, in the words of Hamilton, describes a woman as "having acquired the most accurate description of the breeding symptoms, and with wonderful facility imagined that she had felt every one of them." He found the woman on a bed complaining of great labor-pains, biting a handkerchief, and pulling on a cloth attached to her bed. The finger on the abdomen or vulva elicited symptoms of great sensitiveness. He told her she was not pregnant, and the next day she was sitting up, though the discharge continued, but the simulated throes of labor, which she had so graphically pictured, had ceased.

Haultain gives three examples of pseudocyesis, the first with no apparent cause, the second due to carcinoma of the uterus, while in the third there was a small fibroid in the anterior wall of the uterus. Some cases are of purely nervous origin, associated with a purely muscular distention of the abdomen. Clay reported a case due to ascites. Cases of pseudocyesis in women convicted of murder are not uncommon, though most of them are imposters hoping for an extra lease of life.

Croon speaks of a child seven years old on whom he performed ovariotomy for a round-celled sarcoma. She had been well up to May, but since then she had several times been raped by a boy, in consequence of which she had constant uterine hemorrhage. Shortly after the first coitus her abdomen began to enlarge, the breasts to develop, and the areolae to darken. In seven months the abdomen presented the signs of pregnancy, but the cervix was soft and patulous; the sound entered three inches and was followed by some hemorrhage. The child was well developed, the mons was covered with hair, and all the associate symptoms tended to increase the deception.

Sympathetic Male Nausea of Pregnancy.--Associated with pregnancy there are often present morning-nausea and vomiting as prominent and reliable symptoms. Vomiting is often so excessive as to be provocative of most serious issue and even warranting the induction of abortion. This fact is well known and has been thoroughly discussed, but with it is associated an interesting point, the occasional association of the same symptoms sympathetically in the husband. The belief has long been a superstition in parts of Great Britain, descending to America, and even exists at the present day. Sir Francis Bacon has written on this subject, the substance of his argument being that certain loving husbands so sympathize with their pregnant wives that they suffer morning-sickness in their own person. No less an authority than S. Weir Mitchell called attention to the interesting subject of sympathetic vomiting in the husband in his lectures on nervous maladies some years ago. He also quotes the following case associated with pseudocyesis:--

"A woman had given birth to two female children. Some years passed and her desire for a boy was ungratified. Then she missed her flow once, and had thrice after this, as always took place with her when pregnant, a very small but regular loss. At the second month morning-vomiting came on as usual with her. Meanwhile she became very fat, and as the growth was largely, in fact excessively, abdominal, she became easily sure of her condition. She was not my patient, but her husband consulted me as to his own morning-sickness, which came on with the first occurrence of this sign in his wife, as had been the case twice before in her former pregnancies. I advised him to leave home, and this proved effectual. I learned later that the woman continued to gain flesh and be sick every morning until the seventh month. Then menstruation returned, an examination was made, and when sure that there was no possibility of her being pregnant she began to lose flesh, and within a few months regained her usual size."

Hamill reports an instance of morning-sickness in a husband two weeks after the appearance of menstruation in the wife for the last time. He had daily attacks, and it was not until the failure of the next menses that the woman had any other sign of pregnancy than her husband's nausea. His nausea continued for two months, and was the same as that which he had suffered during his wife's former pregnancies, although not until both he and his wife became aware of the existence of pregnancy. The Lancet describes a case in which the husband's nausea and vomiting, as well as that of the wife, began and ended simultaneously. Judkins cites an instance of a man who was sick in the morning while his wife was carrying a child. This occurred during every pregnancy, and the man related that his own father was similarly affected while his mother was in the early months of pregnancy with him, showing an hereditary predisposition.

The perverted appetites and peculiar longings of pregnant women furnish curious matter for discussion. From the earliest times there are many such records. Borellus cites an instance, and there are many others, of pregnant women eating excrement with apparent relish. Tulpius, Sennert, Langius, van Swieten, a Castro, and several others report depraved appetites. Several writers have seen avidity for human flesh in such females. Fournier knew a woman with an appetite for the blood of her husband. She gently cut him while he lay asleep by her side and sucked blood from the wounds--a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of thirty-two, who had been married ten years, who acquired a strong taste for charcoal, and was ravenous for it. It seemed to cheer her and to cure a supposed dyspepsia. She devoured enormous quantities, preferring hard-wood charcoal. Bruyesinus speaks of a woman who had a most perverted appetite for her own milk, and constantly drained her breasts; Krafft-Ebing cites a similar case. Another case is that of a pregnant woman who had a desire for hot and pungent articles of food, and who in a short time devoured a pound of pepper. Scheidemantel cites a case in which the perverted appetite, originating in pregnancy, became permanent, but this is not the experience of most observers. The pregnant wife of a farmer in Hassfort-on-the-Main ate the excrement of her husband.

Many instances could be quoted, some in which extreme cases of polydipsia and bulimia developed; these can be readily attributed to the increased call for liquids and food. Other cases of diverse new emotions can be recalled, such as lasciviousness, dirty habits, perverted thoughts, and, on the other hand, extreme piety, chastity, and purity of the mind. Some of the best-natured women are when pregnant extremely cross and irritable and many perversions of disposition are commonly noticed in pregnancy. There is often a longing for a particular kind of food or dish for which no noticeable desire had been displayed before.

Maternal Impressions.--Another curious fact associated with pregnancy is the apparent influence of the emotions of the mother on the child in utero. Every one knows of the popular explanation of many birth-marks, their supposed resemblance to some animal or object seen by the mother during pregnancy, etc. The truth of maternal impressions, however, seems to be more firmly established by facts of a substantial nature. There is a natural desire to explain any abnormality or anomaly of the child as due to some incident during the period of the mother's pregnancy, and the truth is often distorted and the imagination heavily drawn upon to furnish the satisfactory explanation. It is the customary speech of the dime-museum lecturer to attribute the existence of some "freak" to an episode in the mother's pregnancy. The poor "Elephant-man" firmly believed his peculiarity was due to the fact that his mother while carrying him in utero was knocked down at the circus by an elephant. In some countries the exhibition of monstrosities is forbidden because of the supposed danger of maternal impression. The celebrated "Siamese Twins" for this reason were forbidden to exhibit themselves for quite a period in France.

We shall cite only a few of the most interesting cases from medical literature. Hippocrates saved the honor of a princess, accused of adultery with a negro because she bore a black child, by citing it as a case of maternal impression, the husband of the princess having placed in her room a painting of a negro, to the view of which she was subjected during the whole of her pregnancy. Then, again, in the treatise "De Superfoetatione" there occurs the following distinct statement: "If a pregnant woman has a longing to eat earth or coals, and eats of them, the infant which is born carries on its head the mark of these things." This statement, however, occurs in a work which is not mentioned by any of the ancient authorities, and is rejected by practically all the modern ones; according to Ballantyne, there is, therefore, no absolute proof that Hippocrates was a believer in one of the most popular and long-persisting beliefs concerning fetal deformities.

In the explanation of heredity, Hippocrates states "that the body of the male as well as that of the female furnishes the semen. That which is weak (unhealthy) is derived from weak (unhealthy) parts, that which is strong (healthy) from strong (healthy) parts, and the fetus will correspond to the quality of the semen. If the semen of one part come in greater quantity from the male than from the female, this part will resemble more closely the father; if, however, it comes more from the female, the part will rather resemble the mother. If it be true that the semen comes from both parents, then it is impossible for the whole body to resemble either the mother or the father, or neither the one nor the other in anything, but necessarily the child will resemble both the one and the other in something. The child will most resemble the one who contributes most to the formation of the parts." Such was the Hippocratic theory of generation and heredity, and it was ingeniously used to explain the hereditary nature of certain diseases and malformations. For instance, in speaking of the sacred disease (epilepsy), Hippocrates says: "Its origin is hereditary, like that of other diseases; for if a phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease of another having disease of the spleen, what is to hinder it from happening that where the father and mother were subject to this disease certain of their offspring should be so affected also? As the semen comes from all parts of the body, healthy particles will come from healthy parts, and unhealthy from unhealthy parts."

According to Pare, Damascene saw a girl with long hair like a bear, whose mother had constantly before her a picture of the hairy St. John. Pare also appends an illustration showing the supposed resemblance to a bear. Jonston quotes a case of Heliodorus; it was an Ethiopian, who by the effect of the imagination produced a white child. Pare describes this case more fully: "Heliodorus says that Persina, Queen of Ethiopia, being impregnated by Hydustes, also an Ethiopian, bore a daughter with a white skin, and the anomaly was ascribed to the admiration that a picture of Andromeda excited in Persina throughout the whole of the pregnancy." Van Helmont cites the case of a tailor's wife at Mechlin, who during a conflict outside her house, on seeing a soldier lose his hand at her door, gave birth to a daughter with one hand, the other hand being a bleeding stump; he also speaks of the case of the wife of a merchant at Antwerp, who after seeing a soldier's arm shot off at the siege of Ostend gave birth to a daughter with one arm. Plot speaks of a child bearing the figure of a mouse; when pregnant, the mother had been much frightened by one of these animals. Gassendus describes a fetus with the traces of a wound in the same location as one received by the mother. The Lancet speaks of several cases--one of a child with a face resembling a dog whose mother had been bitten; one of a child with one eye blue and the other black, whose mother during confinement had seen a person so marked; of an infant with fins as upper and lower extremities, the mother having seen such a monster; and another, a child born with its feet covered with scalds and burns, whose mother had been badly frightened by fireworks and a descending rocket. There is the history of a woman who while pregnant at seven months with her fifth child was bitten on the right calf by a dog. Ten weeks after, she bore a child with three marks corresponding in size and appearance to those caused by the dog's teeth on her leg. Kerr reports the case of a woman in her seventh month whose daughter fell on a cooking stove, shocking the mother, who suspected fatal burns. The woman was delivered two months later of an infant blistered about the mouth and extremities in a manner similar to the burns of her sister. This infant died on the third day, but another was born fourteen months later with the same blisters. Inflammation set in and nearly all the fingers and toes sloughed of. In a subsequent confinement, long after the mental agitation, a healthy unmarked infant was born.

Hunt describes a case which has since become almost classic of a woman fatally burned, when pregnant eight months, by her clothes catching fire at the kitchen grate. The day after the burns labor began and was terminated by the birth of a well-formed dead female child, apparently blistered and burned in extent and in places corresponding almost exactly to the locations of the mother's injuries. The mother died on the fourth day.

Webb reports the history of a negress who during a convulsion while pregnant fell into a fire, burning the whole front of the abdomen, the front and inside of the thighs to the knees, the external genitals, and the left arm. Artificial delivery was deemed necessary, and a dead child, seemingly burned much like its mother, except less intensely, was delivered. There was also one large blister near the inner canthus of the eye and some large blisters about the neck and throat which the mother did not show. There was no history of syphilis nor of any eruptive fever in the mother, who died on the tenth day with tetanus.

Graham describes a woman of thirty-five, the mother of seven children, who while pregnant was feeding some rabbits, when one of the animals jumped at her with its eyes "glaring" upon her, causing a sudden fright. Her child was born hydrocephalic. Its mouth and face were small and rabbit-shaped. Instead of a nose, it had a fleshy growth 3/4 inch long by 1/4 inch broad, directed upward at an angle of 45 degrees. The space between this and the mouth was occupied by a body resembling an adult eye. Within this were two small, imperfect eyes which moved freely while life lasted (ten minutes). The child's integument was covered with dark, downy, short hair. The woman recovered and afterward bore two normal children.

Parvin mentions an instance of the influence of maternal impression in the causation of a large, vivid, red mark or splotch on the face: "When the mother was in Ireland she was badly frightened by a fire in which some cattle were burned. Again, during the early months of her pregnancy she was frightened by seeing another woman suddenly light the fire with kerosene, and at that time became firmly impressed with the idea that her child would be marked." Parvin also pictures the "turtle-man," an individual with deformed extremities, who might be classed as an ectromelus, perhaps as a phocomelus, or seal-like monster. According to the story, when the mother was a few weeks pregnant her husband, a coarse, rough fisherman, fond of rude jokes, put a large live turtle in the cupboard. In the twilight the wife went to the cupboard and the huge turtle fell out, greatly startling her by its hideous appearance as it fell suddenly to the floor and began to move vigorously.

Copeland mentions a curious case in which a woman was attacked by a rattlesnake when in her sixth month of pregnancy, and gave birth to a child whose arm exhibited the shape and action of a snake, and involuntarily went through snake-like movements. The face and mouth also markedly resembled the head of a snake.

The teeth were situated like a serpent's fangs. The mere mention of a snake filled the child (a man of twenty-nine) with great horror and rage, "particularly in the snake season." Beale gives the history of a case of a child born with its left eye blackened as by a blow, whose mother was struck in a corresponding portion of the face eight hours before confinement. There is on record an account of a young man of twenty-one suffering from congenital deformities attributed to the fact that his mother was frightened by a guinea-pig having been thrust into her face during pregnancy. He also had congenital deformity of the right auricle. At the autopsy, all the skin, tissues, muscles, and bones were found involved. Owen speaks of a woman who was greatly excited ten months previously by a prurient curiosity to see what appearance the genitals of her brother presented after he had submitted to amputation of the penis on account of carcinoma. The whole penis had been removed. The woman stated that from the time she had thus satisfied herself, her mind was unceasingly engaged in reflecting and sympathizing on the forlorn condition of her brother. While in this mental state she gave birth to a son whose penis was entirely absent, but who was otherwise well and likely to live. The other portions of the genitals were perfect and well developed. The appearance of the nephew and the uncle was identical. A most peculiar case is stated by Clerc as occurring in the experience of Kuss of Strasburg. A woman had a negro paramour in America with whom she had had sexual intercourse several times. She was put in a convent on the Continent, where she stayed two years. On leaving the convent she married a white man, and nine months after she gave birth to a dark-skinned child. The supposition was that during her abode in the convent and the nine months subsequently she had the image of her black paramour constantly before her. Loin speaks of a woman who was greatly impressed by the actions of a clown at a circus, and who brought into the world a child that resembled the fantastic features of the clown in a most striking manner.

Young speaks of a woman who three months previously had aborted a three months' fetus, but a tumor still remained in the abdomen, the auscultation of which gave evidence of a fetal heart-beat. Vaginal examination revealed a dilatation of the os uteri of at least one inch and a fetal head pressing out; subsequently a living fetus of about six months of age was delivered. Severe hemorrhage complicated the case, but was controlled, and convalescence speedily ensued. Huse cites an instance of a mother bearing a boy on November 4, 1834, and a girl on August 3, 1835. At birth the boy looked premature, about seven months old, which being the case, the girl must have been either a superfetation or a seven months' child also. Van Bibber of Baltimore says he met a young lady who was born five months after her sister, and who was still living.

The most curious and convincing examples of superfetation are those in which children of different colors, either twins or near the same age, are born to the same woman,--similar to that exemplified in the case of the mare who was covered first by a stallion and a quarter of an hour later by an ass, and gave birth at one parturition to a horse and a mule. Parsons speaks of a case at Charleston, S.C., in 1714, of a white woman who gave birth to twins, one a mulatto and the other white. She confessed that after her husband left her a negro servant came to her and forced her to comply with his wishes by threatening her life. Smellie mentions the case of a black woman who had twins, one child black and the other almost white. She confessed having had intercourse with a white overseer immediately after her husband left her bed. Dewees reports a similar case. Newlin of Nashville speaks of a negress who bore twins, one distinctly black with the typical African features, while the other was a pretty mulatto exhibiting the distinct characters of the Caucasian race. Both the parents were perfect types of the black African negro. The mother, on being questioned, frankly acknowledged that shortly after being with her husband she had lain a night with a white man. In this case each child had its own distinct cord and placenta.

Archer gives facts illustrating and observations showing: "that a white woman, by intercourse with a white man and negro, may conceive twins, one of which shall be white and the other a mulatto; and that, vice versa, a black woman, by intercourse with a negro and a white man, may conceive twins, one of which shall be a negro and the other a mulatto." Wight narrates that he was called to see a woman, the wife of an East Indian laborer on the Isle of Trinidad, who had been delivered of a fetus 6 inches long, about four months old, and having a cord of about 18 inches in length. He removed the placenta, and in about half an hour the woman was delivered of a full-term white female child. The first child was dark, like the mother and father, and the mother denied any possibility of its being a white man's child; but this was only natural on her part, as East Indian husbands are so intensely jealous that they would even kill an unfaithful wife. Both the mother and the mysterious white baby are doing well. Bouillon speaks of a negress in Guadeloupe who bore twins, one a negro and the other a mulatto. She had sexual congress with both a negro and a white man.

Delmas, a surgeon of Rouen, tells of a woman of thirty-six who was delivered in the hospital of his city on February 26, 1806, of two children, one black and the other a mulatto. She had been pregnant eight months, and had had intercourse with a negro twice about her fourth month of pregnancy, though living with the white man who first impregnated her. Two placentae were expelled some time after the twins, and showed a membranous junction. The children died shortly after birth.

Pregnancy often takes place in a unicorn or bicorn uterus, leading to similar anomalous conditions. Galle, Hoffman, Massen, and Sanger give interesting accounts of this occurrence, and Ross relates an instance of triple pregnancy in a double uterus. Cleveland describes a discharge of an anomalous deciduous membrane during pregnancy which was probably from the unimpregnated half of a double uterus.

CHAPTER II.

PRENATAL ANOMALIES.

Extrauterine Pregnancy.--In the consideration of prenatal anomalies, the first to be discussed will be those of extrauterine pregnancy. This abnormalism has been known almost as long as there has been any real knowledge of obstetrics. In the writings of Albucasis, during the eleventh century, extrauterine pregnancy is discussed, and later the works of N. Polinus and Cordseus, about the sixteenth century, speak of it; in the case of Cordseus the fetus was converted into a lithopedion and carried in the abdomen twenty-eight years. Horstius in the sixteenth century relates the history of a woman who conceived for the third time in March, 1547, and in 1563 the remains of the fetus were still in the abdomen.

Israel Spach, in an extensive gynecologic work published in 1557, figures a lithopedion drawn in situ in the case of a woman with her belly laid open. He dedicated to this calcified fetus, which he regarded as a reversion, the following curious epigram, in allusion to the classical myth that after the flood the world was repopulated by the two survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who walked over the earth and cast stones behind them, which, on striking the ground, became people. Roughly translated from the Latin, this epigram read as follows: "Deucalion cast stones behind him and thus fashioned our tender race from the hard marble. How comes it that nowadays, by a reversal of things, the tender body of a little babe has limbs nearer akin to stone?" Many of the older writers mention this form of fetation as a curiosity, but offer no explanation as to its cause. Mauriceau and de Graaf discuss in full extrauterine pregnancy, and Salmuth, Hannseus, and Bartholinus describe it. From the beginning of the eighteenth century this subject always demanded the attention and interest of medical observers. In more modern times, Campbell and Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, who named it "Grossesse Pathologique," have carefully defined and classified the forms, and to-day every text-book on obstetrics gives a scientific discussion and classification of the different forms of extrauterine pregnancy.

The site of the conception is generally the wall of the uterus, the Fallopian tube, or the ovary, although there are instances of pregnancy in the vagina, as for example when there is scirrhus of the uterus; and again, cases supposed to be only extrauterine have been instances simply of double uterus, with single or concurrent pregnancy. Ross speaks of a woman of thirty-three who had been married fourteen years, had borne six children, and who on July 16, 1870, miscarried with twins of about five months' development. After a week she declared that she was still pregnant with another child, but as the physician had placed his hand in the uterine cavity after the abortion, he knew the fetus must be elsewhere or that no pregnancy existed. We can readily see how this condition might lead to a diagnosis of extrauterine pregnancy, but as the patient insisted on a thorough examination, the doctor found by the stethoscope the presence of a beating fetal heart, and by vaginal examination a double uterus. On introducing a sound into the new aperture he discovered that it opened into another cavity; but as the woman was pregnant in this, he proceeded no further. On October 31st she was delivered of a female child of full growth. She had menstruated from this bipartite uterus three times during the period between the miscarriage of the twins and the birth of the child. Both the mother and child did well.

In most cases there is rupture of the fetal sac into the abdominal cavity or the uterus, and the fetus is ejected into this location, from thence to be removed or carried therein many years; but there are instances in which the conception has been found in situ, as depicted in Figure 2. A sturdy woman of thirty was executed on January 16, 1735, for the murder of her child. It was ascertained that she had passed her catamenia about the first of the month, and thereafter had sexual intercourse with one of her fellow-prisoners. On dissection both Fallopian tubes were found distended, and the left ovary, which bore signs of conception, was twice as large as the right. Campbell quotes another such case in a woman of thirty-eight who for twenty years had practised her vocation as a Cyprian, and who unexpectedly conceived. At the third month of pregnancy a hard extrauterine tumor was found, which was gradually increasing in size and extending to the left side of the hypogastrium, the associate symptoms of pregnancy, sense of pressure, pain, tormina, and dysuria, being unusually severe. There was subsequently at attack of inflammatory fever, followed by tumefaction of the abdomen, convulsions, and death on the ninth day. The fetus had been contained in the peritoneal coat of the ovary until the fourth month, when one of the feet passed through the cyst and caused the fatal result. Signs of acute peritonitis were seen postmortem, the abdominal cavity was full of blood, and the ovary much lacerated.

The termination of extrauterine pregnancy varies; in some cases the fetus is extracted by operation after rupture; in others the fetus has been delivered alive by abdominal section; it may be partially absorbed, or carried many years in the abdomen; or it may ulcerate through the confining walls, enter the bowels or bladder, and the remnants of the fetal body be discharged.

The curious cases mentioned by older writers, and called abortion by the mouth, etc., are doubtless, in many instances, remnants of extrauterine pregnancies or dermoid cysts. Maroldus speaks in full of such cases; Bartholinus, Salmuth, and a Reyes speak of women vomiting remnants of fetuses. In Germany, in the seventeenth century, there lived a woman who on three different occasions is said to have vomited a fetus. The last miscarriage in this manner was of eight months' growth and was accompanied by its placenta. The older observers thought this woman must have had two orifices to her womb, one of which had some connection with the stomach, as they had records of the dissection of a female in whom was found a conformation similar to this.

Discharge of the fetal bones or even the whole of an extrauterine fetus by the rectum is not uncommon. There are two early cases mentioned in which the bones of a fetus were discharged at stool, causing intense pain. Armstrong describes an anomalous case of pregnancy in a syphilitic patient who discharged fetal bones by the rectum. Bubendorf reports the spontaneous elimination of a fetal skeleton by the rectum after five years of retention, with recovery of the patient. Butcher speaks of delivery through the rectum at the fourth month, with recovery. Depaul mentions a similar expulsion after a pregnancy of about two months and a half. Jackson reports the dissection of an extrauterine sac which communicated freely with the large intestine. Peck has an example of spontaneous delivery of an extrauterine fetus by the rectum, with recovery of the mother. Skippon, in the early part of the last century, reports the discharge of the bones of a fetus through an "imposthume" in the groin. Other cases of anal discharge of the product of extrauterine conception are recorded by Winthrop, Woodbury, Tuttle, Atkinson, Browne, Weinlechner, Gibson, Littre, Magruder, Gilland, and many others. De Brun du Bois-Noir speaks of the expulsion of extrauterine remains by the anus after seven years, and Heyerdahl after thirteen years. Benham mentions the discharge of a fetus by the rectum; there was a stricture of the rectum associated with syphilitic patches, necessitating the performance of colotomy.

Bartholinus and Rosseus speak of fetal bones being discharged from the urinary passages. Ebersbach, in the Ephemerides of 1717, describes a necropsy in which a human fetus was found contained in the bladder. In 1878 White reported an instance of the discharge of fetal remains through the bladder.

Discharge of the Fetus through the Abdominal Walls.--Margaret Parry of Berkshire in 1668 voided the bones of a fetus through the flesh above the os pubis, and in 1684 she was alive and well, having had healthy children afterward. Brodie reports the history of a case in a negress who voided a fetus from an abscess at the navel about the seventeenth month of conception. Modern instances of the discharge of the extrauterine fetus from the walls of the abdomen are frequently reported. Algora speaks of an abdominal pregnancy in which there was spontaneous perforation of the anterior abdominal parietes, followed by death. Bouzal cites an extraordinary case of ectopic gestation in which there was natural expulsion of the fetus through abdominal walls, with subsequent intestinal strangulation. An artificial anus was established and the mother recovered. Brodie, Dunglison, Erich, Rodbard, Fox, and Wilson are among others reporting the expulsion of remnants of ectopic pregnancies through the abdominal parietes. Campbell quotes the case of a Polish woman, aged thirty-five, the mother of nine children, most of whom were stillborn, who conceived for the tenth time, the gestation being normal up to the lying-in period. She had pains followed by extraordinary effusion and some blood into the vagina. After various protracted complaints the abdominal tumor became painful and inflamed in the umbilical region. A breach in the walls soon formed, giving exit to purulent matter and all the bones of a fetus. During this process the patient received no medical treatment, and frequently no assistance in dressing the opening. She recovered, but had an artificial anus all her life. Sarah McKinna was married at sixteen and menstruated for the first time a month thereafter. Ten months after marriage she showed signs of pregnancy and was delivered at full term of a living child; the second child was born ten months after the first, and the second month after the second birth she again showed signs of pregnancy. At the close of nine months these symptoms, with the exception of the suppression of menses, subsided, and in this state she continued for six years. During the first four years she felt discomfort in the region of the umbilicus. About the seventh year she suffered tumefaction of the abdomen and thought she had conceived again. The abscess burst and an elbow of the fetus protruded from the wound. A butcher enlarged the wound and, fixing his finger under the jaw of the fetus, extracted the head. On looking into the abdomen he perceived a black object, whereupon he introduced his hand and extracted piecemeal an entire fetal skeleton and some decomposed animal-matter. The abdomen was bound up, and in six weeks the woman was enabled to superintend her domestic affairs; excepting a ventral hernia she had no bad after-results. Kimura, quoted by Whitney, speaks of a case of extrauterine pregnancy in a Japanese woman of forty-one similar to the foregoing, in which an arm protruded through the abdominal wall above the umbilicus and the remains of a fetus were removed through the aperture. The accompanying illustration shows the appearance of the arm in situ before extraction of the fetus and the location of the wound.

Bodinier and Lusk report instances of the delivery of an extrauterine fetus by the vagina; and Mathieson relates the history of the delivery of a living ectopic child by the vagina, with recovery of the mother. Gordon speaks of a curious case in a negress, six months pregnant, in which an extrauterine fetus passed down from the posterior culdesac and occluded the uterus. It was removed through the vagina, and two days later labor-pains set in, and in two hours she was delivered of a uterine child. The placenta was left behind and drainage established through the vagina, and the woman made complete recovery.

Combined Intrauterine and Extrauterine Gestation.--Many well-authenticated cases of combined pregnancy, in which one of the products of conception was intrauterine and the other of extrauterine gestation, have been recorded. Clark and Ramsbotham report instances of double conception, one fetus being born alive in the ordinary manner and the other located extrauterine. Chasser speaks of a case in which there was concurrent pregnancy in both the uterus and the Fallopian tube. Smith cites an instance of a woman of twenty-three who became pregnant in August, 1870. In the following December she passed fetal bones from the rectum, and a month later gave birth to an intrauterine fetus of six months' growth. McGee mentions the case of a woman of twenty-eight who became pregnant in July, 1872, and on October 20th and 21st passed several fetal bones by the rectum, and about four months later expelled some from the uterus. From this time she rapidly recovered her strength and health. Devergie quotes an instance of a woman of thirty who had several children, but who died suddenly, and being pregnant was opened. In the right iliac fossa was found a male child weighing 5 pounds and 5 ounces, 8 1/2 inches long, and of about five months' growth. The uterus also contained a male fetus of about three months' gestation. Figure 4 shows combined intrauterine and extrauterine gestation. Hodgen speaks of a woman of twenty-seven, who was regular until November, 1872; early in January, 1873, she had an attack of pain with peritonitis, shortly after which what was apparently an extrauterine pregnancy gradually diminished. On August 17, 1873, after a labor of eight hours, she gave birth to a healthy fetus. The hand in the uterus detected a tumor to the left, which wag reduced to about one-fourth the former size. In April, 1874, the woman still suffered pain and tenderness in the tumor. Hodgen believed this to have been originally a tubal pregnancy, which burst, causing much hemorrhage and the death of the fetus, together with a limited peritonitis. Beach has seen a twin compound pregnancy in which after connection there was a miscarriage in six weeks, and four years after delivery of an extrauterine fetus through the abdominal walls. Cooke cites an example of intrauterine and extrauterine pregnancy progressing simultaneously to full period of gestation, with resultant death. Rosset reports the case of a woman of twenty-seven, who menstruated last in November, 1878, and on August 5, 1879, was delivered of a well-developed dead female child weighing seven pounds. The uterine contractions were feeble, and the attached placenta was removed only with difficulty; there was considerable hemorrhage. The hemorrhage continued to occur at intervals of two weeks, and an extrauterine tumor remained. Two weeks later septicemia supervened and life was despaired of. On the 15th of October a portion of a fetus of five months' growth in an advanced stage of decomposition protruded from the vulva. After the escape of this putrid mass her health returned, and in four months she was again robust and healthy. Whinery speaks of a young woman who at the time of her second child-birth observed a tumor in the abdomen on her right side and felt motion in it. In about a month she was with severe pain which continued a week and then ceased. Health soon improved, and the woman afterward gave birth to a third child; subsequently she noticed that the tumor had enlarged since the first birth, and she had a recurrence of pain and a slight hemorrhage every three weeks, and distinctly felt motion in the tumor. This continued for eighteen months, when, after a most violent attack of pain, all movement ceased, and, as she expressed it, she knew the moment the child died. The tumor lost its natural consistence and felt flabby and dead. An incision was made through the linea alba, and the knife came in contact with a hard, gritty substance, three or four lines thick. The escape of several quarts of dark brown fluid followed the incision, and the operation had to be discontinued on account of the ensuing syncope. About six weeks afterward a bone presented at the orifice, which the woman extracted, and this was soon followed by a mass of bones, hair, and putrid matter. The discharge was small, and gradually grew less in quantity and offensiveness, soon ceasing altogether, and the wound closed. By December health was good and the menses had returned.

Ahlfeld, Ambrosioni,Galabin, Packard, Thiernesse, Maxson, de Belamizaran, Dibot, and Chabert are among others recording the phenomenon of coexisting extrauterine and intrauterine pregnancy. Argles mentions simultaneous extrauterine fetation and superfetation.

Sanger mentions a triple ectopic gestation, in which there was twin pregnancy in the wall of the uterus and a third ovum at the fimbriated end of the right tube. Careful examination showed this to be a case of intramural twin pregnancy at the point of entrance of the tube and the uterus, while at the abdominal end of the same tube there was another ovum,--the whole being an example of triple unilateral ectopic gestation.

The instances of delivery of an extrauterine fetus, with viability of the child, from the abdomen of the mother would attract attention from their rarity alone, but when coupled with associations of additional interest they surely deserve a place in a work of this nature. Osiander speaks of an abdominal fetus being taken out alive, and there is a similar case on record in the early part of this century. The London Medical and Physical Journal, in one of its early numbers, contained an account of an abdominal fetus penetrating the walls of the bladder and being extracted from the walls of the hypogastrium; but Sennertus gives a case which far eclipses this, both mother and fetus surviving. He says that in this case the woman, while pregnant, received a blow on the lower part of her body, in consequence of which a small tumor appeared shortly after the accident. It so happened in this case that the peritoneum was extremely dilatable, and the uterus, with the child inside, made its way into the peritoneal sac. In his presence an incision was made and the fetus taken out alive. Jessop gives an example of extrauterine gestation in a woman of twenty-six, who had previously had normal delivery. In this case an incision was made and a fetus of about eight months' growth was found lying loose in the abdominal cavity in the midst of the intestines. Both the mother and child were saved. This is a very rare result. Campbell, in his celebrated monograph, in a total of 51 operations had only seen recorded the accounts of two children saved, and one of these was too marvelous to believe. Lawson Tait reports a case in which he saved the child, but lost the mother on the fourth day. Parvin describes a case in which death occurred on the third day. Browne quotes Parry as saying that there is one twin pregnancy in 23 extrauterine conceptions. He gives 24 cases of twin conception, one of which was uterine, the other extrauterine, and says that of 7 in the third month, with no operation, the mother died in 5. Of 6 cases of from four and a half to seven months' duration, 2 lived, and in 1 case at the fifth month there was an intrauterine fetus delivered which lived. Of 11 such cases at nine months, 6 mothers lived and 6 intrauterine fetuses lived. In 6 of these cases no operation was performed. In one case the mother died, but both the uterine and the extrauterine conceptions lived. In another the mother and intrauterine fetus died, and the extrauterine fetus lived. Wilson a gives an instance of a woman delivered of a healthy female child at eight months which lived. The after-birth came away without assistance, but the woman still presented every appearance of having another child within her, although examination by the vagina revealed none. Wilson called Chatard in consultation, and from the fetal heart-sounds and other symptoms they decided that there was another pregnancy wholly extrauterine. They allowed the case to go twenty-three days, until pains similar to those of labor occurred, and then decided on celiotomy. The operation was almost bloodless, and a living child weighing eight pounds was extracted. Unfortunately, the mother succumbed after ninety hours, and in a month the intrauterine child died from inanition, but the child of extrauterine gestation thrived. Sales gives the case of a negress of twenty-two, who said that she had been "tricked by a negro," and had a large snake in the abdomen, and could distinctly feel its movements. She stoutly denied any intercourse. It was decided to open the abdominal cyst; the incision was followed by a gush of blood and a placenta came into view, which was extracted with a living child. To the astonishment of the operators the uterus was distended, and it was decided to open it, when another living child was seen and extracted. The cyst and the uterus were cleansed of all clots and the wound closed. The mother died of septicemia, but the children both lived and were doing well six weeks after the operation. A curious case was seen in 1814 of a woman who at her fifth gestation suffered abdominal uneasiness at the third month, and this became intolerable at the ninth month. The head of the fetus could be felt through the abdomen; an incision was made through the parietes; a fully developed female child was delivered, but, unfortunately, the mother died of septic infection.

The British Medical Journal quotes: "Pinard (Bull. de l'Acad. de Med., August 6, 1895) records the following, which he describes as an ideal case. The patient was aged thirty-six, had had no illness, and had been regular from the age of fourteen till July, 1894. During August of that year she had nausea and vomiting; on the 22d and 23d she lost a fluid, which was just pink. The symptoms continued during September, on the 22d and 23d of which month there was a similar loss. In October she was kept in bed for two days by abdominal pain, which reappeared in November, and was then associated with pain in micturition and defecation. From that time till February 26, 1895, when she came under Pinard's care, she was attended by several doctors, each of whom adopted a different diagnosis and treatment. One of them, thinking she had a fibroid, made her take in all about an ounce of savin powder, which did not, however, produce any ill effect. When admitted she looked ill and pinched. The left thigh and leg were painful and edematous. The abdomen looked like that of the sixth month of pregnancy. The abdominal wall was tense, smooth, and without lineae albicantes. Palpation revealed a cystic immobile tumor, extending 2 inches above the umbilicus and apparently fixed by deep adhesions. The fetal parts could only be made out with difficulty by deep palpation, but the heart-sounds were easily heard to the right of and below the umbilicus. By the right side of this tumor one could feel a small one, the size of a Tangerine orange, which hardened and softened under examination. When contracted the groove between it and the large tumor became evident. Vaginal examination showed that the cervix, which was slightly deflected forward and to the right and softened, as in uterine gestation, was continuous with the smaller tumor. Cephalic ballottement was obtained in the large tumor. No sound was passed into the uterus for fear of setting up reflex action; the diagnosis of extrauterine gestation at about six and a half months with a living child was established without requiring to be clinched by proving the uterus empty. The patient was kept absolutely at rest in bed and the edema of the left leg cured by position. On April 30th the fundus of the tumor was 35 cm. above the symphysis and the uterus 11 1/2 cm.; the cervix was soft as that of a primipara at term. Operation, May 2d: Uterus found empty, cavity 14 1/2 cm. long. Median incision in abdominal wall; cyst walls exposed; seen to be very slight and filled with enormous vessels, some greater than the little finger. On seizing the wall one of these vessels burst, and the hemorrhage was only rendered greater on attempting to secure it, so great was the friability of the walls. The cyst was therefore rapidly opened and the child extracted by the foot. Hemorrhage was restrained first by pressure of the hands, then by pressure-forceps and ligatures. The walls of the cyst were sewn to the margins of the abdominal wound, the edge of the placenta being included in the suture. A wound was thus formed 10 cm. in diameter, with the placenta for its base; it was filled with iodoform and salicylic gauze. The operation lasted an hour, and the child, a boy weighing 5 1/2 pounds, after a brief period of respiratory difficulties, was perfectly vigorous. There was at first a slight facial asymmetry and a depression on the left upper jaw caused by the point of the left shoulder, against which it had been pressed in the cyst; these soon disappeared, and on the nineteenth day the boy weighed 12 pounds. The maternal wound was not dressed till May 13th, when it was washed with biniodid, 1:4000. The placenta came away piecemeal between May 25th and June 2d. The wound healed up, and the patient got up on the forty-third day, having suckled her infant from the first day after its birth."

Quite recently Werder has investigated the question of the ultimate fate of ectopic children delivered alive. He has been able to obtain the record of 40 cases. Of these, 18 died within a week after birth; 5 within a month; 1 died at six months of bronchopneumonia; 1 at seven months of diarrhea; 2 at eleven months, 1 from croup; 1 at eighteen months from cholera infantum--making a total of 26 deaths and leaving 14 children to be accounted for. Of these, 5 were reported as living and well after operation, with no subsequent report; 1 was strong and healthy after three weeks, but there has been no report since; 1 was well at six months, then was lost sight of; 1 was well at the Last report; 2 live and are well at one year; 2 are living and well at two years; 1 (Beisone's case) is well at seven years; and 1 (Tait's case) is well at fourteen and one-half years. The list given on pages 60 and 61 has been quoted by Hirst and Dorland. It contains data relative to 17 cases in which abdominal section has been successfully performed for advanced ectopic gestation with living children.

Long Retention of Extrauterine Pregnancy.--The time of the retention of an extrauterine gestation is sometimes remarkable, and it is no uncommon occurrence for several pregnancies to successfully ensue during such retention. The Ephemerides contains examples of extrauterine pregnancy remaining in the abdomen forty-six years; Hannaeus mentioned an instance remaining ten years, the mother being pregnant in the meantime; Primperosius speaks of a similar instance; de Blegny, one of twenty-five years in the abdomen; Birch, a case of eighteen years in the abdomen, the woman bearing in the meantime; Bayle, one of twenty-six years, and the Ephemerides, another. In a woman of forty-six, the labor pains intervened without expulsion of the fetus. Impregnation ensued twice afterward, each followed by the birth of a living child. The woman lived to be ninety-four, and was persuaded that the fetus was still in the abdomen, and directed a postmortem examination to be made after her decease, which was done, and a large cyst containing an ossified fetus was discovered in the left side of the cavity. In 1716 a woman of Joigny when thirty years old, having been married four years, became pregnant, and three months later felt movements and found milk in her breasts. At the ninth month she had labor-pains, but the fetus failed to present; the pains ceased, but recurred in a month, still with a negative result. She fell into a most sickly condition and remained so for eighteen months, when the pains returned again, but soon ceased. Menstruation ceased and the milk in her breasts remained for thirty years. She died at sixty-one of peripneumonia, and on postmortem examination a tumor was found occupying part of the hypogastric and umbilical regions. It weighed eight pounds and consisted of a male fetus of full term with six teeth; it had no odor and its sac contained no liquid. The bones seemed better developed than ordinarily; the skin was thick, callous, and yellowish The chorion, amnion, and placenta were ossified and the cord dried up. Walther mentions the case of an infant which remained almost petrified in the belly of its mother for twenty-three years. No trace of the placenta, cord, or enveloping membrane could be found.

Cordier publishes a paper on ectopic gestation, with particular reference to tubal pregnancy, and mentions that when there is rupture between the broad ligaments hemorrhage is greatly limited by the resistance of the surrounding structures, death rarely resulting from the primary rupture in this location. Cordier gives an instance in which he successfully removed a full-grown child, the result of an ectopic gestation which had ruptured intraligamentally and had been retained nearly two years.

Lospichlerus gives an account of a mother carrying twins, extrauterine, for six years. Mounsey of Riga, physician to the army of the Czarina, sent to the Royal Society in 1748 the bones of a fetus that had been extracted from one of the fallopian tubes after a lodgment of thirteen years. Starkey Middleton read the report of a case of a child which had been taken out of the abdomen, having lain there nearly sixteen years, during which time the mother had borne four children. It was argued at this time that boys were conceived on the right side and girls on the left, and in commenting on this Middleton remarks that in this case the woman had three boys and one girl after the right fallopian tube had lost its function. Chester cites the instance of a fetus being retained fifty-two years, the mother not dying until her eightieth year. Margaret Mathew carried a child weighing eight pounds in her abdomen for twenty-six years, and which after death was extracted. Aubrey speaks of a woman aged seventy years unconsciously carrying an extrauterine fetus for many years, which was only discovered postmortem. She had ceased to menstruate at forty and had borne a child at twenty-seven. Watkins speaks of a fetus being retained forty-three years; James, others for twenty-five, thirty, forty-six, and fifty years; Murfee, fifty-five years; Cunningham, forty years; Johnson, forty-four years; Josephi, fifteen years (in the urinary bladder); Craddock, twenty-two years, and da Costa Simoes, twenty-six years.

Long Retention of Uterine Pregnancy.--Cases of long retained intrauterine pregnancies are on record and deserve as much consideration as those that were extrauterine. Albosius speaks of a mother carrying a child in an ossified condition in the uterus for twenty-eight years. Cheselden speaks of a case in which a child was carried many years in the uterus, being converted into a clay-like substance, but preserving form and outline. Caldwell mentions the case of a woman who carried an ossified fetus in her uterus for sixty years. Camerer describes the retention of a fetus in the uterus for forty-six years; Stengel, one for ten years, and Storer and Buzzell, for twenty-two months. Hannaeus, in 1686, issued a paper on such a case under the title, "Mater, Infantis Mortui Vivum Sepulchrum," which may be found in French translation.

Buchner speaks of a fetus being retained in the uterus for six years, and Horstius relates a similar case. Schmidt's Jahrbucher contain the report of a woman of forty-nine, who had borne two children. While threshing corn she felt violent pain like that of labor, and after an illness suffered a constant fetid discharge from the vagina for eleven years, fetal bones being discharged with occasional pain. This poor creature worked along for eleven years, at the end of which time she was forced to bed, and died of symptoms of purulent peritonitis. At the necropsy the uterus was found adherent to the anterior wall of the abdomen and containing remnants of a putrid fetus with its numerous bones. There is an instance recorded of the death of a fetus occurring near term, its retention and subsequent discharge being through a spontaneous opening in the abdominal wall one or two months after.

Meigs cites the case of a woman who dated her pregnancy from March, 1848, and which proceeded normally for nine months, but no labor supervened at this time and the menses reappeared. In March, 1849, she passed a few fetal bones by the rectum, and in May, 1855, she died. At the necropsy the uterus was found to contain the remains of a fully developed fetus, minus the portions discharged through a fistulous connection between the uterine cavity and the rectum. In this case there had been retention of a fully developed fetus for nine years. Cox describes the case of a woman who was pregnant seven months, and who was seized with convulsions; the supposed labor-pains passed off, and after death the fetus was found in the womb, having lain there for five years. She had an early return of the menses, and these recurred regularly for four years. Dewees quotes two cases, in one of which the child was carried twenty months in the uterus; in the other, the mother was still living two years and five months after fecundation. Another case was in a woman of sixty, who had conceived at twenty-six, and whose fetus was found, partly ossified, in the uterus after death.

There are many narratives of the long continuation of fetal movements, and during recent years, in the Southern States, there was quite a prevalence of this kind of imposters. Many instances of the exhibition of fetal movements in the bellies of old negro women have been noticed by the lay journals, but investigation proves them to have been nothing more than an exceptional control over the abdominal muscles, with the ability to simulate at will the supposed fetal jerks. One old woman went so far as to show the fetus dancing to the music of a banjo with rhythmical movements. Such imposters flourished best in the regions given to "voodooism." We can readily believe how easy the deception might be when we recall the exact simulation of the fetal movements in instances of pseudocyesis.

The extraordinary diversity of reports concerning the duration of pregnancy has made this a much mooted question. Many opinions relative to the longest and shortest period of pregnancy, associated with viability of the issue, have been expressed by authors on medical jurisprudence. There is perhaps no information more unsatisfactory or uncertain. Mistakes are so easily made in the date of the occurrence of pregnancy, or in the date of conception, that in the remarkable cases we can hardly accept the propositions as worthy evidence unless associated with other and more convincing facts, such as the appearance and stage of development of the fetus, or circumstances making conception impossible before or after the time mentioned, etc. It will be our endeavor to cite the more seemingly reliable instances of the anomalies of the time or duration of pregnancy reported in reputable periodicals or books.

Short Pregnancies.--Hasenet speaks of the possibility of a living birth at four months; Capuron relates the instance of Fortunio Liceti, who was said to have been born at the end of four and a half months and lived to complete his twenty-fourth year. In the case of the Marechal de Richelieu, the Parliament of Paris decreed that an infant of five months possessed that capability of living the ordinary period of existence, i.e., the "viabilite," which the law of France requires for the establishment of inheritance. In his seventh book Pliny gives examples of men who were born out of time. Jonston gives instances of births at five, six, seven, and eight months. Bonnar quotes 5 living births before the one hundred and fiftieth day; 1 of one hundred and twenty-five days; 1 of one hundred and twenty days; 1 of one hundred and thirty-three days, surviving to twenty-one months; and 1 of one hundred and thirty-five days' pregnancy surviving to eighty years. Maisonneuve describes a case in which abortion took place at four and a half months; he found the fetus in its membranes two hours after delivery, and, on laying the membranes open, saw that it was living. He applied warmth, and partly succeeded in restoring it; for a few minutes respiratory movements were performed regularly, but it died in six hours. Taylor quotes Carter concerning the case of a fetus of five months which cried directly after it was born, and in the half hour it lived it tried frequently to breathe. He also quotes Davies, mentioning an instance of a fetus of five months, which lived twelve hours, weighing 2 pounds, and measuring 12 inches, and which cried vigorously. The pupillary membrane was entire, the testes had not descended, and the head was well covered with hair. Usher speaks of a woman who in 1876 was delivered of 2 male children on the one hundred and thirty-ninth day; both lived for an hour; the first weighed 10 ounces 6 drams and measured 9 3/4 inches; the other 10 ounces 7 drams, with the same length as the first. Routh speaks of a Mrs. F----, aged thirty-eight, who had borne 9 children and had had 3 miscarriages, the last conception terminating as such. Her husband was away, and returned October 9, 1869. She did not again see her husband until the 3d or 4th of January. The date of quickening was not observed, and the child was born June 8, 1870. During gestation she was much frightened by a rat. The child was weak, the testes undescended, and it lived but eighteen days, dying of symptoms of atrophy. The parents were poor, of excellent character, and although, according to the evidence, this pregnancy lasted but twenty-two weeks and two days, there was absolutely no reason to suspect infidelity.

Ruttel speaks of a child of five months who lived twenty-four hours; and he saw male twins born at the sixth month weighing 3 pounds each who were alive and healthy a year after. Barker cites the case of a female child born on the one hundred and fifty-eighth day that weighed 1 pound and was 11 inches long. It had rudimentary nails, very little hair on the head, its eyelids were closed, and the skin much shriveled; it did not suckle properly, and did not walk until nineteen months old. Three and a half years after, the child was healthy and thriving, but weighed only 29 1/2 pounds. At the time of birth it was wrapped up in a box and placed before the fire. Brouzet speaks of living births of from five to six months' pregnancy, and Kopp speaks of a six months' child which lived four days. The Ephemerides contains accounts of living premature births.

Newinton describes a pregnancy of five months terminating with the birth of twins, one of whom lived twenty minutes and the other fifteen. The first was 11 1/2 inches long, and weighed 1 pound 3 1/2 ounces, and the other was 11 inches long, and weighed 1 pound. There is a recent instance of premature birth following a pregnancy of between five and a half and six months, the infant weighing 955 grams. One month after birth, through the good offices of the wet-nurse and M. Villemin, who attended the child and who invented a "couveuse" for the occasion, it measured 38 cm. long.

Moore is accredited with the trustworthy report of the case of a woman who bore a child at the end of the fifth month weighing 1 1/2 pounds and measuring 9 inches. It was first nourished by dropping liquid food into its mouth; and at the age of fifteen months it was healthy and weighed 18 pounds. Eikam saw a case of abortion at the fifth month in which the fetus was 6 inches in length and weighed about 8 ounces. The head was sufficiently developed and the cranial bones considerably advanced in ossification. He tied the cord and placed the fetus in warm water. It drew up its feet and arms and turned its head from one side to the other, opening its mouth and trying to breathe. It continued in this wise for an hour, the action of the heart being visible ten minutes after the movements ceased. From its imperfectly developed genitals it was supposed to have been a female. Professor J. Muller, to whom it was shown, said that it was not more than four months old, and this coincided with the mother's calculation.

Villemin before the Societe Obstetricale et Gynecologique reported the case of a two-year-old child, born in the sixth month of pregnancy. That the child had not had six months of intrauterine life he could vouch, the statement being borne out by the last menstrual period of the mother, the date of the first fetal movements, the child's weight, which was 30 1/2 ounces, and its appearance. Budin had had this infant under observation from the beginning and corroborated Villemin's statements. He had examined infants of six or seven months that had cried and lived a few days, and had found the alveolar cavities filled with epithelial cells, the lung sinking when placed in a vessel of water. Charpentier reported a case of premature birth in his practice, the child being not more than six and a half months and weighing 33 1/2 ounces. So sure was he that it would not live that he placed it in a basin while he attended to the mother. After this had been done, the child being still alive, he wrapped it in cotton and was surprised next day to find it alive. It was then placed in a small, well-heated room and fed with a spoon on human milk; on the twelfth day it could take the breast, since which time it thrived and grew.

There is a case on record of a child viable at six months and twenty days. The mother had a miscarriage at the beginning of 1877, after which menstruation became regular, appearing last from July 3 to 9, 1877. On January 28, 1878, she gave birth to a male infant, which was wrapped in wadding and kept at an artificial temperature. Being unable to suckle, it was fed first on diluted cow's milk. It was so small at birth that the father passed his ring over the foot almost to the knee. On the thirteenth day it weighed 1250 grams, and at the end of a week it was taking the breast. In December, 1879, it had 16 teeth, weighed 10 kilograms, walked with agility, could pronounce some words, and was especially intelligent. Capuron relates an instance of a child born after a pregnancy of six and a half months and in excellent health at two years, and another living at ten years of the same age at birth. Tait speaks of a living female child, born on the one hundred and seventy-ninth day, with no nails on its fingers or toes, no hair, the extremities imperfectly developed, and the skin florid and thin. It was too feeble to grasp its mother's nipple, and was fed for three weeks by milk from the breast through a quill. At forty days it weighed 3 pounds and measured 13 inches. Before the expiration of three months it died of measles. Dodd describes a case in which the catamenia were on the 24th of June, 1838, and continued a week; the woman bore twins on January 11, 1839, one of which survived, the other dying a few minutes after birth. She was never irregular, prompt to the hour, and this fact, coupled with the diminutive size of the children, seemed to verify the duration of the pregnancy. In 1825, Baber of Buxur, India, spoke of a child born at six and a half months, who at the age of fifty days weighed 1 pound and 13 ounces and was 14 inches long. The longest circumference of the head was 10 inches and the shortest 9.1 inches. The child suckled freely and readily. In Spaeth's clinic there was a viable infant at six and a half months weighing 900 grams. Spaeth says that he has known a child of six months to surpass in eventual development its brothers born at full term.

In some cases there seems to be a peculiarity in women which manifests itself by regular premature births. La Motte, van Swieten, and Fordere mention females who always brought forth their conceptions at the seventh month.

The incubator seems destined to be the future means of preserving these premature births. Several successful cases have been noticed, and by means of an incubator Tarnier succeeded in raising infants which at the age of six months were above the average. A full description of the incubator may be found. The modified Auvard incubator is easily made; the accompanying illustrations (Figs. 5, 6, and 7) explain its mechanism. Several improved incubators have been described in recent years, but the Auvard appears to be the most satisfactory.

The question of retardation of labor, like that of premature birth, is open to much discussion, and authorities differ as to the limit of protraction with viability. Aulus Gellius says that, after a long conversation with the physicians and wise men, the Emperor Adrian decided in a case before him, that of a woman of chaste manners and irreproachable character, the child born eleven months after her husband's death was legitimate. Under the Roman law the Decenviri established that a woman may bear a viable child at the tenth month of pregnancy. Paulus Zacchias, physician to Pope Innocent X, declared that birth may be retarded to the tenth month, and sometimes to a longer period. A case was decided in the Supreme Court of Friesland, a province in the northern part of the Netherlands, October, 1634, in which a child born three hundred and thirty-three days after the death of the husband was pronounced legitimate. The Parliament of Paris was gallant enough to come to the rescue of a widow and save her reputation by declaring that a child born after a fourteen months' gestation was legitimate. Bartholinus speaks of an unmarried woman of Leipzig who was delivered after a pregnancy of sixteen months. The civil code of France provides that three hundred days shall constitute the longest period of the legitimacy of an infant; the Scottish law, three hundred days; and the Prussian law, three hundred and one days.

There are numerous cases recorded by the older writers. Amman has one of twelve months' duration; Enguin, one of twelve months'; Buchner, a case of twelve months'; Benedictus, one of fourteen months'; de Blegny, one of nineteen months'; Marteau, Osiander, and others of forty-two and forty-four weeks'; and Stark's Archives, one of forty-five weeks', living, and also another case of forty-four weeks'. An incredible case is recorded of an infant which lived after a three years' gestation. Instances of twelve months' duration are also recorded. Jonston quotes Paschal in relating an instance of birth after pregnancy of twenty-three months; Aventium, one after two years; and Mercurialis, a birth after a four years' gestation--which is, of course, beyond belief.

Thormeau writes from Tours, 1580, of a case of gestation prolonged to the twenty-third month, and Santorini, at Venice, in 1721, describes a similar case, the child reaching adult life. Elvert records a case of late pregnancy, and Henschel one of forty-six weeks, but the fetus was dead. Schneider cites an instance of three hundred and eight days' duration. Campbell says that Simpson had cases of three hundred and nineteen, three hundred and thirty-two, and three hundred and thirty-six days'; Meigs had one of four hundred and twenty. James Reid, in a table of 500 mature births, gives 14 as being from three hundred and two to three hundred and fifteen days'.

Not so long ago a jury rendered a verdict of guilty of fornication and bastardy when it was alleged that the child was born three hundred and seventeen days after intercourse. Taylor relates a case of pregnancy in which the wife of a laborer went to America three hundred and twenty-two days before the birth. Jaffe describes an instance of the prolongation of pregnancy for three hundred and sixty-five days, in which the developments and measurements corresponded to the length of protraction. Bryan speaks of a woman of twenty-five who became pregnant on February 10, 1876, and on June 17th felt motion. On July 28th she was threatened with miscarriage, and by his advice the woman weaned the child at the breast. She expected to be confined the middle of November, 1876, but the expected event did not occur until April 26, 1877, nine months after the quickening and four hundred and forty days from the time of conception. The boy was active and weighed nine pounds. The author cites Meigs' case, and also one of Atlee's, at three hundred and fifty-six days.

Talcott, Superintendent of the State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane, explained the pregnancy of an inmate who had been confined for four years in this institution as one of protracted labor. He said that many such cases have been reported, and that something less than two years before he had charge of a case in which the child was born. He made the report to the New York Senate Commission on Asylums for the Insane as one of three years' protraction. Tidd speaks of a woman who was delivered of a male child at term, and again in ten months delivered of a well-developed male child weighing 7 1/4 pounds; he relates the history of another case, in Clifton, W. Va., of a woman expecting confinement on June 1st going over to September 16th, the fetus being in the uterus over twelve months, and nine months after quickening was felt.

Two extraordinary cases are mentioned, one in a woman of thirty-five, who expected to be confined April 24, 1883. In May she had a few labor-pains that passed away, and during the next six months she remained about as large as usual, and was several times thought to be in the early stages of labor. In September the os dilated until the first and second fingers could be passed directly to the head. This condition lasted about a month, but passed away. At times during the last nine months of pregnancy she was almost unable to endure the movements of the child. Finally, on the morning of November 6th, after a pregnancy of four hundred and seventy-six days, she was delivered of a male child weighing 13 pounds. Both the mother and child did well despite the use of chloroform and forceps. The other case was one lasting sixteen months and twenty days.