and accomplished Grandison, he who knew how to pay such proper homage to our sex, and raise woman to the altitude on which Nature intended to place her, are to be found."

Miss Agnes Flora Judith was as good as her word-novels were absolutely tabooed at the castle of St. Doulagh's; and Grace, suddenly deprived of the works that, from the excitement they had given to her curiosity, and the new world of enjoyment they had opened to her lively sensibilities, had had a taming effect upon the exuberance of her spirits, relapsed into her wonted ones, to the utter despair of her aunt, who began to think it vain to hope she should ever be able to break her in, in such a manner as to render her capable of receiving the instructions she wished to impart to her.

Just at this period, the sublime system of Gall and Spurzheim, on Phrenology, began to make a noise in the world, or at least to reach the loophole of retreat on which Miss Agnes Flora Judith looked

out upon what was passing amongst mankind. With the eagerness with which whatever was new caught her fancy, she immediately set about endeavouring to make herself mistress of it; but in vain, till by chance some volumes of Blackwood's Magazine fell into her hands, fully explaining it to her, to her great satisfaction and delight.

"It is a well-known fact," says sir Toby Tickletoby, in the work just mentioned, "that the human cranium may be moulded, in early infancy, into any conceivable shape, from the elastic nature of the bones of which it is formed; and it is equally well ascertained, that several tribes of savages take their distinctive mark from the form of the skull. It is fashionable, for instance, among one tribe, to wear their brain in a case shaped like a sugar-loaf, while others prefer to have their terminating prominence moulded in imitation of a cocoa-nut. And I have little doubt, when the interior of the African continent is better known, that nations will

be found, with their craniums compressed into forms still more unaccountable.'Men whose heads do grow

Othello says,

beneath their shoulders,' and he was a naThe mere mention of

tive of Africa.

these undoubted facts, when coupled with the knowledge of the functions of the brain, derived from the writings of Gall and Spurzheim, must awaken in the minds of philosophical observers, ideas of the perfectibility of the human race, and the concentration and expansion of the powers of the human mind, which may make the golden age of the old world, or the millennium of the present, an event within the reach of ordinary life, and perfectly practicable in the next generation.

"As all the organs of thought and volition are as distinctly laid down," he goes on, " in the cranial map of Gall and Spurzheim, as the position of the isle of May, or the Bell-rock, in the charts of the coast of Scotland, and as I have already demonstrated the practicability of compressing the cranial bones, at an early age, in

to any conceivable form, nothing more is required to give a new and definite direction to the thoughts and feelings of the next generation, than to mould the infant head to a given form, by the simple application of an unyielding metal headdress, formed so as only to permit the developement of the required organs."

"Oh Heavens, what a glorious discovery!" exclaimed Miss Agnes Flora Judith, in an absolute transport; "what trouble is it not calculated to save parents, and tutors, and governesses--in short, all concerned in the instruction of youth, in future! had I been sooner acquainted with it, what moments of labour and anxiety should I have been spared about Eugene and Grace! but it is not yet too late to profit by it-much yet remains to be done for them, and I shall immediately therefore proceed to act upon it; that is," and she turned pale with dismay at the thoughts of the opposition she might meet with in the effort from them," if their un

suppressed bump, or organ of obstinacy, will permit me."

Suspense on such a subject was not endurable they were immediately summoned to her; and after a good deal of coaxing, in order to wheedle them into a complying humour with her intention of having their heads immediately prepared for the adoption of the metal cap, she thus began:-"By this time, my dear children, I must hope you are so well assured of my affection for you, that you must be convinced I can propose nothing that is not for your advantage. That there are but two kingdoms in this world, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, I early endeavoured to impress upon your infant minds; now to one or other we must belong; but how difficult it is to attain to the one we must all naturally prefer, let the constant struggles we are enduring between our good and bad propensities tell. To conquer the latter of course must be our aim, as the only means of enabling us to aspire to ultimate