say the end justifies the means, and we know how false to all higher conceptions of the religious life is the type of one who is ready to do evil that good may come. We contrast with such dark, mistaken eagerness, a type like that of Saint Catherine of Siena, who made the means to her ends so attractive that she has won for herself an undying place in the "House Beautiful," not by her fairness of soul merely, but by those quite different qualities which commend themselves to the poet and the artist. Yet for most of us the conception of means and ends covers the whole of life, and is the exclusive type or figure under which we represent our lives to ourselves. Such a figure, reducing all things to machinery, though it has on its side the authority of that old Greek moralist who has fixed for succeeding generations the outline of the theory of right living, is too like a mere picture or description of men's lives, as we actually find them, to be the basis of the higher ethics. It covers the meanness of men's daily lives, and much of the dexterity and the vigor with which they pursue what may seem to them the good of themselves or of others; but not the intangible perfection of those whose ideal is rather in being than in doing; not those manners which are in the deepest as in the simplest sense morals, and without which one cannot so much as offer a cup of water to a poor man without offence; not the part of "antique Rachel," sitting in the company of Beatrice; and the higher morality might well endeavor rather to draw men's attention from the conception of means and ends in life altogether. Against this predominance of machinery in life Wordsworth's poetry, like all great art and poetry, is a continual protest. Justify rather the end by the means, it seems to say; whatever may become of the fruit, make sure of the flowers and the leaves. It was justly said, therefore, by one who had meditated more profoundly than others on the true relation of means to ends in life, and on the distinction between what is desirable in itself and what is desirable only as machinery, that when the battle which he and his friends were waging had been won, the world would need more than ever those qualities which Wordsworth was keeping alive and nourishing. That the end of life is not action but contemplation, being as distinct from doing, a certain disposition of the mind, is in some shape or other the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle in part; these, by their very sterility, are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified. This then is the true moral significance of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation. Their work is, not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a little while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them with appropriate emotions on the spectacle of those great facts in man's existence which no machinery affects, on the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature,” on "the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow." To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth's is a great feeder and stimulant. He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world : images, in his own words, "of man suffering amid awful forms and pow ers." Such is the figure of the more powerful and original poet, hidden away in part under those weaker elements in Wordsworth's poetry which for some minds determine their entire character; a poet somewhat bolder and more passionate than might at first sight be supposed, but too bold for taste or poetry; an unimpassioned writer, might sometimes fancy, yet thinking the chief aim, in and art alike, to be a certain deep emotion; seeking a often the great elementary passions in lowly places; ing at least this condition of all impassioned work, that aims always at an absolute sincerity of feeling and dict so that he is the true forerunner of the deepest and passionate poetry of our own day; yet going back also, w something of a protest against the conventional fervo much of the poetry popular in his own time, to those o English poets whose unconscious likeness often comes in him. NOSTRADAMUS THE ASTROLOGER. LOOKING over some old catalogues of books the day my eye was caught by a title: "L'Histoire de la F humaine," published at Leipzig in the year 1785. true that eighty years have passed since then, da which we have had time for a vast quantity of folly, so the work would now be necessarily imperfect; but a world of instruction and amusement might be conve only up to the year 1785, were the writer capable of ba ling his subject! I looked for the size of the work inward misgiving that my slender purse might not ra the number of volumes, but I put the catalogue d and walked away with disappointment, when I looked ther and found it was only a duodecimo. Heaven earth did one ever see the like? A man has the un alleled effrontery to offer a history of human folly in decimo! He tenders this wretched epitome as a s tute for the magnificent work which some Gibbon wil day place in the hands of future ages! It is a su which concerns us all. Mr. Carlyle once told man that they were mostly fools. We received the senta with an uncommon rapture, as if it were an entirely and most important discovery -a contribution to study of human nature which had escaped the notic previous satirists and anatomists. Mostly fools; and Leipzig friend dismisses us all in a duodecimo volume is an insult to humanity. Human folly, among all its branches, can show which has lasted longer, and taken more trouble to than the so-called science of astrology. By what sec the idea of astrology was hit upon, how men conceived the course of the stars was concerned with their fort by what long and tedious process of formularization an development it grew in men's minds till it became a sy and a power, has yet to be investigated. It is a form superstition which has been the handmaid, like aleh to a good deal of real and sound science. And, most forms of superstition, its chief mischiefs appea have lain in the comfortable cradling of ignorance. The desire to know the dreaded future is the most ral expression of human weakness—that weakness proceeds from ignorance; which vanishes as the secre nature are gathered in; for the future loses half its c tainty when men learn the laws of phenomena, and Fate, to which the world and the gods have been a slaves, disappears like a dream. Nature is no more a tress and an enemy, but a handmaid, and the stars in courses have no longer to do with men's fortunes and lives. Astrology has taken, like all deep rooted supe tions, a great deal of killing, and, though I think we fairly consider it to be dead at last, one hardly knows most flourishing period was during the sixteenth and enteenth centuries, when it was believed in, advers and supported as much as it was attacked. Rabelais, sensible of men, dealt it a blow after his own fashion. he wrote his almanac, but that did not kill it; for you = be careful how you laugh at an idol, and the prudent generally waits till the people themselves have pul down. Then, indeed, you may jump upon him, stick into him, and mock his wretched helplessness like ed African. But in the times of Rabelais the practice strology was a learned profession. Bacon enumerates nong the sciences; and the chief recognition of the sers of the great Hohenheim, called Paracelsus, to science that he was vulgarly esteemed the first astrologer of day, though he despised and detested the very name of ology. auric and Cardan cast horoscopes at the court of ace. New-born children were brought them to have r nativities calculated. They read the lines on the l's hands and head, noted the exact time of birth, and ently handed the parents a careful and exact summary ts future. During the English Revolution both sides their astrologers; Lilly, Butler's Sidrophel, being coned as to the most favorable moment for Charles to e his escape. Dryden cast the nativities of his own , while at the same period the most eminent scientific in England belonged to the Astrologers' Club. fen believed in astrology long after philosophers had en it up, but with a gradually growing distrust a half ef, nourished only by the usual stories of coincidence fortunate predictions; while the final and complete nction of the superstition is due to the cold disbelief ch in the last century cleared away so vast an amount nediæval rubbish. Even yet, lurking in holes and cor3, are people who have read the old books on astrology, > can cast a nativity, who still firmly believe that every 's history is written in the heavens, and that the stars willing to give up their secrets if questioned according orm. n the sixteenth century astrology seemed on its trial. en a prophecy turned out palpably and clearly false, 1 scoffed at the science. Thus, when Gauric discov1, a short time before Henry the Second was killed by ntgomery's lance, that the king was going to live to the of sixty-nine years and ten months, everybody laughed, velling at the credulity of other people and the charlaism of astrologers. And they laughed again when Carpredicted for Edward the Sixth of England, only a or two before the news of his death arrived, a long and opy life, which was a singularly unfortunate prediction. uric never held up his head after his unlucky accident. rdan, on the contrary, declared that there was a mistake his calculations, and having gone through them all over in, brought out a new prophecy, after the event, agreewith every detail of it in the most remarkable and concing manner. They scoffed when the astrologers went ong, but how when they were right? How did men k at each other and tremble, as in the presence of a at and mysterious power, when the prediction was fuled to the letter, and the reader of the future proved his wer? How, for instance, when the news came from ovence that a physician in a little country town had actlly predicted the death of King Henry in the clearest most unmistakable terms? It was in a quatrain, ich was handed about, and read as follows: "Le lyon jeune le vieux surmontera: Deux classes une, puis mourir, mort cruelle." Could there be a doubt? The young lion was Montmery, the old, Henry the Second. The singular duel s the tournament. The cage of gold was the king's helet; and the "mort cruelle " was the death of the king. The author of this, and a great many hundreds of similar atrains, was the great, the illustrious, the immortal Echel de Nostredame, commonly called Nostradamus. e was born at St. Remy, in the year 1503. Two of his eat-grandfathers, both eminent physicians, had been conrted Jews; and the astrologer used to boast that they re both of the tribe of Issachar, a tribe which he mainned, one hardly sees why, to have been signally and ecially endowed with the gift of prophecy. Nor was it, said, by any virtue or merit of his own that he was ened to read the future and the distant present. He did not, as may be expected, arrive suddenly at, nor was he for a long time conscious of possessing, this remarkable faculty of prediction. Quite the contrary. He spent a laborious and praiseworthy youth, studying medicine and science at Avignon and Montpellier. While at the latter place, a pestilence of some kind ran through the south of France, and young Nostradamus went to face it with a courage and success which gained him great credit. He then settled at Agen, on the recommendation of his friend Julius Cæsar Scaliger, where he married and had children, but wife and children died. He married again a few years later, and settled down for the rest of his life to practise medicine, to work at astrology, and to write predictions. His admirers have handed down many of those particulars which are always so interesting in a great man's biography: how he only slept four hours every night (how can writers go on making this daring assertion about their idols?) how he lived a godly and pious life (we may allow this); how he was of small stature, with a large and thick beard, with other important details, which we pass over. He languished in obscurity, in spite of his prodigious gifts at reading the future, for many years. But his fame gradually spread, and when the quatrain above quoted, which foretold the death of King Henry, was read, Catherine de Medicis herself sent for him to Paris, and gave him the title of "counsellor extraordinary and physician to the king." Nostradamus had the good sense to take warning by the examples of Gauric and Cardan. He very soon perceived that the air of Paris was not favorable to prophets. Scoffers were abroad. A wicked unbeliever wrote a cruel epigram upon him: "Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est: Sic cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus." The newly-appointed physician to the king was one of those who are easily daunted by ridicule, so he packed up and went south again, whence he never removed and whither Charles the Ninth afterwards visited him. It is sad to read that in his own town he was always regarded, save by one favorite disciple, as an impostor of the first, and therefore most successful order. This disciple, Jean de Chavigny, one of those simple and lovable creatures, born for the nourishment of the quack and the humbug, who will believe anything, hovered round the master like Cadijah round Mohammed. He left his native town of Beaune, where the wine is so good, and took up his residence altogether in Salon itself, so as to be always near Nostradamus, abandoning family, estate, occupation, and all. Like another Boswell, he noted the things that fell from the doctor's lips; and after his death, spent twentyeight years in editing and commentating the "Centuries." It is delightful to learn that in his society the prophet would unbend from his mystic forereachings into futurity and condescend to predict some of the minor events of life. "We were once," he tells us, in an anecdote of touching simplicity, "walking abroad. I saw two sucking pigs, one black, the other white. What will be their fate? I asked Nostredame. 'We shall eat the black one,' replied he, 'the white will be eaten by a wolf.' In order to elude the prediction, I told the cook to prepare the white pig for dinner. He did so; but as it lay upon the table, a tame wolf belonging to the house, finding no one there, devoured it. Upon which the cook prepared the black pig, and the prophecy of the infallible Nostredame was accomplished." Wonderful indeed! Before we go on to consider some of the quatrains, let us mention that of two sons, one took to the prophetic business, but with inferior success, being indeed regarded as no better at it than any ordinary "red-faced Nixon," and came to a disastrous end. The story is melancholy indeed. At the siege of Pouzin he predicted that the city would be destroyed by fire. It was not; it was taken by assault. And they actually detected the prophet going round with a match, and setting fire to the city himself, in order to fulfil the prophecy. Could his venerable parent have himself instigated the wolf to eat the white pig? There was indignation among the people when this was made clear to them, and the victim of too much zeal for science was brought before Saint-Luc, commander of the royalist forces. Saint-Luc asked him if he had by accident predicted any accident likely to happen to himself on that very day. The poor prophet had not. Whereupon, in order to make him quite certain for the future, that he had mistaken his vocation, being not a prophet, or, if any, a prophet of Baal, the general rode at him, and killed him with a lance. No such untoward accident happened to the great man himself, Michel. He lived and died in peace, always prophesying, always having his faithful Chavigny to record his triumphs. Honored as he was, save by his own townsmen, in his life, his real glory begins only after his death. For the "Centuries" are printed and reprinted, commented, furnished with notes, explanations, and illustrations, and even called into the service of history. Nobody, it is true, which is the real drawback to all predictions, ancient and modern, ventured to write from Nostradamus the history of the future; but everybody was prepared to observe, when the things had happened, how wonderfully they fitted in with the words of the prophet. unbeliever might ask what was the good of a prediction unless you know what it means. He might go further, and decline to investigate past history in order to mark the sagacity of Nostradamus. And if he had the courage of his opinions, he might point out that the disjointed words, the vague phrases, the open-mouthed threats might do for one event quite as well as the other, and therefore the prophet was not, after all, of such amazing wisdom. But unbelievers were scarce, and Nostradamus held his own. The After being the favorite prophet of Catherine de Medicis and her sons, he was studied in turn by Henry the Fourth, by Louis the Thirteenth, and Louis the Fourteenth. He was translated into English and Italian; he was published in twenty editions and more, and even has his believers, one or two, here and there, rari nantes, to this very day. And in the name of human credulity, why? There is not from beginning to end, so far at least as I have read, - for no mortal man could read all his "Centuries" and survive, one word of sense, precision, or clearness. All is utter, unredeemed, incredible balderdash and rubbish, written in the most uncouth French, with words of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic interspersed; with anagrams such as "Rapis" for Paris, "Nersaf" for France, "Eiouas" for Savoy; the whole designedly meaningless and obscure. And yet I cannot make up my mind that the man was a conscious impostor. It seems to me that, trained in the secrets of astrology, which followed a uniform method, quite easy to be learned, he did quite honestly occupy himself with the future; that in these "Centuries" he set down in the form which he found easiest the results of his investigations as they worked themselves out. Did you ever see a couple of country girls telling fortunes with a pack of cards? Write down their ejaculations as they deal out the pack, and you will have something like a quatrain of Nostradamus's. Thus: "A fair-haired man: a letter and a purse : : There, the girls have made me write down unconsciously a quatrain exactly like one of Nostradamus's most sprightly specimens; only, like most prophets, because people never believe in the advent of good fortune, but are easily impressed with a sense of coming woes and miseries, he deals entirely in the latter: The moon at full, upon the palace wall: The Lion bruised and beaten in a cage: Wretchedly poor stuff! but this is all you will get from Nostradamus. And if no more than this were required to carry on a prophetic trade, one might be quite prepared to set up as a prophet in exactly the same way; only it would be well to know the rules of judicial astrology first, so as to get the formulæ right and save the trouble of vention. The "Centuries" being published and the author de there remained for future ages the task of fitting them in their proper places. This has been done over and over aga the verses being made to do duty for one king after anoth as the ages run on. Of course, you cannot expect commentator to write the history of the next generati Most singular of all, it is only five or six years since a tain M. Anatole de Pelletier published a volume cal "Les Oracles de M. de Nostredame," in which he too lows the course of history by means of the "Centar showing how, in his opinion, every important event s his death has been plainly foretold by the astrol This sagacious person -a sort of French Doctor C ming-has, of course, a blind idolatry for his prop He worships an infallibility even more certain and per than Chavigny discovered. Where we find barbari finds an antique grace, effective handling, the rudetess strength; where we find intentional obscurity he finds natural obscurity of one whose thoughts are too prof for speech; where we hesitate whether to pronounce man an impostor or a brainstruck enthusiast, working cording to the foolish rules of a mistaken science, he upon us to admire the mysterious and divine gift of pro ecy. Above all, he quotes what he is pleased to cons direct predictions of the French Revolution. It is point," he says, "in history to which his eyes are al turned, his thoughts always recurring; he chisels caref every detail of this mighty movement" (we shall see presently); "hither all the forces of his thoughts conve all the radiation of his intelligence; here is displaye the lucidity of the mysterious genius which animated t He afterwards asks us to consider the strange cont which the man presented. He is bold in his writing: see that posterity can neither imprison, fine, nor bur the stake; they can only admire or laugh. He is timg towards his contemporaries, and with good reason. a good Christian and yet a pagan; that is, he was w his generation. Being a scholar, he was, like all the s ars of his age, a pagan; being a man who valued his sonal comfort and safety, he is a Christian in outwar servances. Above all which astonishes M. de Pell much more than it does other people- he gave no w counsel, advice, or guidance to the kings who visited We may also add that on his own family accidents be equally reticent, never having prophesied the death o earlier children, or the violent end of his second so successor. But these prophets are all alike; while contemplate the future the baby tumbles into the They can predict a revolution—a thousand years or a trifle but they are all astray in the events of to and can no more teach us how to avoid a tooth than they can ward off the blood and slaughter of their prophecies." In alienis,” said one of these useless try," mirè oculati, ad nostra cæcutire solemus." row, - Now for a few quatrains. Observe how history out the prediction and how there is no deception. first predicts the reign of Louis the Fourteenth :"Du vieux Charon l'on verra le Phoenix, Estre premier et dernier des fils, Reluire en France," etc. On this the scholiast, writing in the age of the G Monarque, observes that Charon is, of course, a cle error; it should be Chiren. This, read properly, is ric Henricus: Henri the Fourth." Now, Louis Fourteenth being the son of Louis the Thirteenth as grandson of Henry the Fourth, is, of course, the p who will "reluire en France;" this is without doub ridiculously simple. I was going to quote another most important quat but I am estopped by the unfortunate fact that it has by different commentators said to refer to Queen Eliza of England, King Charles the First, Charles the Sec and the French Revolution. After studying it very e fully, I conclude that it was so craftily drawn up by rophet as to include all four interpretations. This ineases our admiration for the astrologer, but it tends to Essen our confidence in the commentator. The same remark cannot be made of the following quaain, which contains a distinct prophecy about England. = reads thus, and one trembles when one writes it: "Sept fois charger verrez gent Britannique Tainte en sang en deux cents nonante ans. he interpretation is clear to the meanest capacity. Seven mes in two hundred and ninety years there shall be a volution in England. Six of them, the commentator lls us, have already come to pass, namely, in 1649, in 560, in 1688, in 1689, in 1711 (when there was a change ministry), and in 1714. The last has yet to come; here is comfort in the thought that it is not due till 1929. Ve have thus fifty-six years before us to prepare for the vent, in which it is only too probable that none of our resent leaders will take an active part. But about the French Revolution, concerning which the rophet has so carefully "chiselled the details." Let us ake three or four of the most remarkable. The first oints, as any one will remark, to the 22d of September, 792: And here is Louis the Sixteenth, drawn to his very eyes: "Le trop bon temps, trop de bonté royale, Fais et deffais, prompt subit, negligence, Legier croira faux d'espouse loyalle, Luy mis à mort par la bénévolence." And here are the Noyades of Nantes : "Des principaux de cité rebellée Qui tiendront fort pour liberté ravoir, -- Cris, hurlements à Nantes, piteux voir." Out of such stuff as the preceding the reputation of a prophet was made! We can hardly read it with patience. But the wonderful thing is, that even in this present century the name of Nostradamus has weight that there have been three several serious attempts made in the last seventy years to rehabilitate him that only six years ago a man was found to publish selections and to revive the stale old story, that during the troubles of the last three years there were whispered abroad rumors that Nostradamus had predicted them all. I could multiply to any extent the selections which I have given. It would be easy to show, in the same way, how Oliver Cromwell, for instance, was so delineated that it was impossible to mistake him. When all is finished there remains nothing but the broad facts that here is a man who pretends to the gift of prophecy, who never once delivers a clear utterance, whose predictions are amazing in their doggerel nonsense, and who yet has believers for three hundred years. Astrology is dead true; but the spirit which led to a belief in astrology is not dead. It seems to me that the spirit is alive still and vigorous. What else mean the Spiritualist journals, the séances, the mediums? They too form part of that long chapter of human folly which treats of men's distrust of themselves, their terror of the things which surround them, their eager catching at whatever may clear away the darkness. Nostradamus was not the only prophet of France; there were many, and the shots of some were a great deal more lucky than his own. There was, for instance, the wellknown prophecy of the Bishop of Arles, date 512, which has, like so many of Nostradamus's, been applied to the French Revolution: "The hand of God shall extend over them, and over all the rich. "All the nobles shall be deprived of their estates. "The altars shall be destroyed, and the holy virgins shall flee from their monasteries. The church pastors shall be driven from their seats, and the church shall be stripped of her temporal goods. "But at length the black eagle and the lion shall appear, coming from four countries. "Woe to thee, O City of Philosophy! thou shalt be subjected. "A captive king, humbled to confusion, shall at last receive his crown." If only dates had been given with this composition, it would have been a creditable composition; without dates, I venture to submit that prophecy is very little use, unless for the vainglory of the prophet, who may chuckle and say, "I told you so all along! Another, of later date (1528), is in these terms: "An Eagle shall come from the East, stretching his wings and hiding the sun. The terror of the world shall be great. The Lily shall lose the crown, and the Eagle shall receive it." Another prophet, in the year 1687, arguing on the assumption that no kingdom can last for more than fourteen centuries, fixes the termination of the French monarchy at the year 1800; an admirable prediction, but for the fact that, after twenty years of suspension, it went on again. Folly all, and vanity. There is little use in reviving the old credulities, except for one thing: that since human nature is always the same, the things that blinded the reason once may blind it again in some other form. Are there no superstitions in the present day, enlightened as we are, which, like astrology, would vanish and disappear were men only brave enough to see that the future is their own, and not mapped out by an inexorable necessity? PROGNOSTICATIONS BY LEECHES. THAT there is a sensitiveness to atmospheric changes in the leech is generally admitted; and the idea of utilizing this little creature as a sort of weather-glass arose long ago, we have evidence, in one of the early volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine. A correspondent of that venerable journal stated that if a leech be kept in a phial or bottle, partly filled with water, it will indicate approaching changes in the weather. He placed on a window-ledge an eight-ounce phial containing a leech and about six ounces of water, and watched it daily. According to his description, when the weather continued serene and beautiful, the leech lay motionless at the bottom of the phial, rolled in a spiral form. When it began to rain at noon, or a little before or after, the leech was found at the top of its lodging, where it remained until the weather became settled. When wind was approaching, the leech galloped about its limpid habitation with great liveliness, seldom resting until the wind became violent. When a thunder-storm was about to appear, the animal sought a lodgment above the level of the water, displayed great uneasiness, and moved about in convulsive like threads. In clear frost, as in fine summer weather, it lay constantly at the bottom; whereas, in snowy weather, like as in rain, it dwelt at the very mouth of the phial. The observer covered the mouth of the phial with a piece of linen cloth, and changed the water every week or two. He seems to have had faith in the correctness of his own observations and conclusions; but went no further in the attempt at explanation than to say: "What reasons may be assigned for these movements, I must leave philosophers to determine; though one thing is evident to everybody that the leech must be affected in the same way as the mercury and spirit in the weather-glass; and has doubtless a very surprising sensation, that change of weather, even days before, makes a visible alteration in its manner of living." This leech-philosophy appears to have had many believ ers in the last century. In a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated 1789, Cowper wrote in one of his (too rare) cheerful moods, and among other gossip said: "Mrs. Throckmorton carries us to-morrow in her chaise to Chichely. The event must, however, be supposed to depend on the elements, at least on the state of the atmosphere, which is turbulent beyond measure. Saturday it thundered, last night it lightened, and at three this morning I saw the sky red as a city in flames could have made it. I have a leech in a bottle that foretells all these prodigies and convulsions of nature. Not, as you will naturally conjecture, by articulate utterances of oracular notices, but by a variety of gesticulations, which here I have not room to give an account of. Suffice it to say, that no change of weather surprises him, and that, in point of the earliest and most accurate intelligence, he is worth all the barometers in the world. None of them all, indeed, can make the least pretence to foretell thunder, a species of capacity of which he has given the most unequivocal evidence. I gave but sixpence for him, which is a groat more than the market-price; though he is, in fact, or rather would be, if leeches were not found in every ditch, an invaluable acquisition." The celebrated Dr. Jenner did the leech the honor of embalming him in verse, as one among a singularly large group of weather prognosticators. The doctor declined an invitation because The hollow mists begin to blow, The clouds look black, the glass is low, And so on, for forty or fifty lines, crowded with folk-lore concerning weather-warnings: ending with, The leech, disturbed, is newly risen Dr. Merryweather (not a bad name for a weatherprophet) stated, in a pamphlet published in 1851, that these lines by Dr. Jenner first suggested to him the prosecution of a series of experiments on the behavior of the leech under the influence of atmospheric changes. He noticed, in the neighborhood of Whitby, that if the leech was restless in calm fine weather, a storm was coming; this, at any rate, was the inference which he drew from a number of observations. He procured twelve white glass bottles, seven inches high by three in diameter, of one pint capacity. He put one leech in each, and so arranged the bottles that the leeches could "see each other," perhaps that they might agree among themselves to make a grand united demonstration. A metal tube ascended from the mouth of each bottle, of such diameter that the leech could not easily enter it, but might do so if he determined on it. No fresh air could enter the bottle except through a small orifice in the tube. All the tubes were varnished inside, to facilitate cleaning. If a leech climbed up into his tube in the daytime, his movements might be watched by an observer; but how to know whether he had ascended during the night, and gone down again? An ingenious bit of apparatus was devised, to enable or compel each leech to register his own movements. A small bell was elevated above the middle of the apparatus, and twelve little hammers around it; a gilt chain, descending from each hammer, passed round a pulley attached to a disk just above the bottle; across the lower end of the tube was a small piece of whalebone, held up by a bit of wire attached to its ce tre; this wire passed through an aperture in the top of th tube, and hooked on to the chain. Such being the mecha ism, the action may be pretty easily comprehended: if th leech ascended, he dislodged the bit of whalebone, an caused the hammer to ring the bell. Supposing the o server to be in another room, and to hear the bell rng, I inferred that a particular change in the weather influence the leech; and if two or more were set ringing at one tim the inference would be pro tanto stronger. This, we m remark, was not self-registering, as that term is usually e ployed in connection with scientific instruments; it si nalled, but did not leave a permanent record. On microscopically examining a leech, Dr. Merryweath considered that he could point to a particular part of animal as the seat of sensitiveness to weather-chang and carried away by his fancies, he declared that “leet are capable of affection; for after they become acquair with me, they never attempt to bite me. Some of th have, over and over again, thrown themselves into grace undulations when I have approached them: I suppose expression of their being glad to see me." Dr. Merryweather described the mode in which he his predictions to the test; but his definitions need not gone into. There is no reason to doubt that his leed did show sensitiveness to the weather, or that he ende ored to watch carefully the changes which supervened the weather whenever any peculiar movements of the mals took place; but it is difficult to transform into d nite language the relation which may appear to exist tween the leech-movements and the weather changes. leeches do not seem to have been particularly sensitive approaching rain; what they chiefly denoted was st another name for wind. Rain may be more important t wind in inland agricultural districts; but wind is more portant than rain on the sea-coast, so far as concerns safety of ships and of human lives. Dr. Merryweather a physician and a resident at Whitby, had many mean knowing the destructive effects of violent winds on Yorkshire coast; and hoped to make his prognostic available for foretelling the approach of storms, gales winds from particular quarters. He even indulged a l that the Admiralty or the Board of Trade might be ind to place such weather prognosticators at various p along the coast, to act as storm-warnings. The apparatus which Dr. Merryweather prepared for Great Exhibition in 1851 was a stand of polished ma any, about three feet in diameter by three feet and a in height. Twelve leech-bottles were arranged in a c on the base of the stand; while the tubes, chains, ham bell, etc., gave a kind of pyramid form to the whole. Jury Report of the Great Exhibition stated that “it is posed to place a leech" in each glass; if this mears the leeches were not actually sent with the rest of apparatus, we can readily understand why the jury of no opinion as to the value of the invention. WHAT WE SAW AND DID AT BERIGONIU WE wanted an excuse for an excursion or a tramp "Let us walk through the kingdom of Selma," sa friend, Dr. Whackenfeldt, Professor of Sanscrit and G at the University of Pumpernickel; "or if not throug whole land, let us at least visit the very ancient, the ternaturally ancient city of Berigonium. It is but s miles distant, and the scenery all the way is magnifice These words were addressed to me and my friend Tavish, as we sat at the window of my apartment at overlooking its lovely bay, the green hills of Kerrera in the farther distance, the sublime mountains of All being in the humor for a new excursion, and weather being fine, we agreed at once to the prop McTavish was for making a picnic of it, but as this arra ment would have involved either a carriage or some to carry our provender, the idea was abandoned: |