THE ACTION OF WATER. We have spoken of the agency of ice streams in changing the features of our globe, we will now mention the action of water in producing the like effect. We have here no theory to propound, no hidden causes to investigate we have but to consult the records of early and late times, in order to see the truth of the adage, 'continual dropping will wear away the stone," exemplified among the grand scenes of nature as well as in our experience of every-day life. But, first, let us trace the agency of water as a forming, not a destroying power. At the mouths of all great rivers, deltas, or tracts of swampy land, are formed by the following process. The materials washed from the banks by the ceaseless flow of the current are held in suspension and carried along while the water is in rapid motion, till meeting the waves of the sea at its embouchure, the force of the river is checked, and the materials are deposited at the bottom, at a greater or less distance from the shore, according to the resistance which the river opposes to the sea, and also somewhat dependent upon other circumstances in the character of the stream. For a river greatly increased by the melting of the snows of a mountainous country, and rushing periodically in a large volume to the ocean, will, when thus swollen, not only carry the debris which it then bears farther out from the shore, but will act in the same manner, though in a smaller degree, upon the accumulations deposited at less turbulent periods. A stream, therefore, which flows through a tolerably flat country, and which is equable in its quantity and force at all seasons of the year, deposits its mud and sand in a more circumscribed space than that which has its source in a mountain chain. Thus are rich alluvial tracts formed, which constantly, but not visibly increasing, gain from the ocean what the wear and tear of its waves in other spots washes away. but it is now filled up, and the town stands two learnes from the sea. The little town of Classe, which is situated in an adjoining marsh, was destroyed by th. Lombards under Luitprand, A.D. 728; it was then a seaport, it is now situated four miles from the shore. If the Adriatic be indeed rising, or the bordering lan! be sinking, the quantity of soil brought down by the rivers must be very great to counteract this. The delta of the Ganges is the most extensive an remarkable of those of which we have to speak. It com mences at a distance of 220 miles direct from the ses and has a base 200 miles in length, besides which enormous deposit, the quantity of mud and sand carried out into the bay of Bengal is so great that during the rainy season, when the stream is turbid, the sea does not recover its transparency even at a distance of sixty miles from the coast, and a glass of water from the river is said to yield one part in four of mud. Hindostan and the Sutlej, the bed of the Ganges being then an was probably once an island, by the union of the Jumba arm of the sea. The Hindoos assert that in the time of Bhagiratha, B.C. 2000, the Gangetic provinces were uninhabitable, except in the upper parts of the country where Satyvrata, or Noah, is said generally to have resided. Bhagiratha went to Hurdwar, and obtaining Gange, led her to the ocean, tracing with the wheels of his chariot two furrows as limits to her encroachments This probably alludes to some wise legislator, who took means to reclaim the lands rendered useless by the overflowing of the Ganges; perhaps the whole country was a swamp without any distinct water-courses. The soil in the Gangetic provinces consists of different sorts of earth in great confusion, the lightest often lying below the heaviest. At an excavation near Benares, some years since, after piercing through several beds of clay, mould, and sand, the workmen came to an old bed of the Ganges thirty feet below the present one. In a deep stratum of river sand were mixed the bones of men and quadrupeds. Under this was clay and earth, and at the depth of 105 feet was fine white sand like that on the sea-shore. Besides this evidence of a former sea covering the plains of Hindostan, there are found in the valleys of the Sewalik mountains beautiful pebbles, agates, and fragments of marble, all rounded by the action of the waves. The Ganges has been known to rise in one night in a column of thirty feet perpendicular, and to carry destruction before it; thus the ancient city of Hastinapura was destroyed. The delta of the Nile is well known, but it has been disputed whether this be wholly an accumulation formed by the river. Tunis is supposed to be the ancient city of Zoan; prostrate columns and other remains have been found there, leading to this opinion; if it be so, the delta has not increased in proportion to the rise of the land along the banks of the river, caused by the clouds of sand which are arrested by the mountains, and which fall upon the valley of the Nile. The vast amount of mud and sand thus conveyed by running water may be imagined from an experiment which was made some years ago on the water of the Rhine, by Mr. L. Horner. This gentleman found that the average of solid matter brought down by the Rhine amounted to 400 tons per hour; and he thus calculated that in the course of one year upwards of 7,000,000,000 tons of debris would be carried along, the greater part of which must be deposited in Holland before reaching the sea, in consequence of the slow and meandering course of the river through that flat alluvial country. In the course of two thousand years the Rhine may thus have brought down enough material to form a stratum one yard thick, extending over an area more than thirty-six miles square. The " wandering Po" likewise brings down large quantities of debris; it receives in its course many mountain-streams, each laden with characteristic matter, which in the descent of the Po to the plains about Ferrara impedes its current, and causes it to form numerous sluggish streams, powerless to bear away the soil with which they are impregnated. Hence a kind of promontory has been formed at the mouth of the river, which, throwing back the sea with double force upon Venice, has caused it to gain upon that city, as is proved by two pavements having been found lying beneath the present one in the place of St. Mark, and below the present level of the Adriatic. Ferber also quotes Italian naturalists as to the presumed fact of the rise of the sea. To the south of the Po stands Ravenna, once the capital of the Western empire, the link between Rome and Constantinople, the residence of the Gothic kings and of the Byzantine exarchs. It contains the mausoleum of Theodoric and the burialplace of Dante. Augustus formed a harbour at Ravenna, | Adonis, Another instance of solid matter conveyed by a river, and forming land, is at the mouth of the Amazon. This river meets the current which crosses the Atlantic from the coast of Africa to that of South America, and the mud which it brings down is deposited along the coast of Guiana, where the sea is shallow; thus the land there is rapidly increasing. The waters of the Amazon are not wholly mingled with those of the ocean at a distance of 300 miles from its mouth, and may be recognised by their muddy colour. Thus, also, the red earth brough: down from the hills of Lebanon by the river Adonis gave rise to the ancient fable of the annual bleeding of the wound which had caused the death of the favourite of Venus. The festival of Adonis was celebrated soon after the autumnal equinox, when the sun gradually withdraws his beams from the northern hemisphere. and the storms of winter begin to despoil the gardens. Then the imaginative heathens mourned the supposed death of the sun in the not less fictitious death of "Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The power of water, when in rapid motion, of trans- On The river Nethey flows into the Spey on its right bank, nearly opposite to Tullochgorum. Previous to the flood it had a meandering course down from the Cairngorum mountains to the bridge which bears its name; but on the 4th August it cut a new straight bed for itself, destroying the haughs on both sides. Terror spread among the inhabitants at Bridge of Nethey; some were stupified; others, more collected, removed their effects. The river filled the smithy, and extinguished the smith's fire; then attacked the neat cottage, surrounded by its luxuriant garden, of an industrious tailor, which stood immediately facing the approach to the west end of the bridge. About six in the morning, the river began its work of destruction, and soon swept away garden, cottage, and road, scooping the ground out to a great depth, and cutting off all communication with that end of the bridge. "About eight o'clock, a number of people were standing on the middle of it, wondering at the immensity and the roaring of the river that was carrying down large trees, and tossing them up perpendicularly, when all at once the enormous mass of timber building composing the saw-mill of Straanbeg, about five hundred yards above, moved bodily off, steadily and magnificently, like some three-decker leaving dock. On it came grandly, without a plank being dislodged. It was tremendous-it was awful to see it advancing on the bridge. The people shuddered. Some moved quickly away; and others, spell-bound, instinctively grasped the parapet to prepare for the shock: its speed was accelerated; it was already within one hundred yards, and the increased velocity of the current must bring it instantaneously upon them; destruction seemed inevitable, when all at once it struck upon a bulwark, went to pieces with a fearful crash, and spreading itself abroad all over the surface of the waters, it rushed down to the Spey in one sea of wreck. The bridge was of grey granite, its central arch thirty-six feet, and its two side arches twentyfour feet span, and of a solidity that promised endurance for ages. But the river having once breached through beyond its western land-breast, undermined it on the flank, swept away the western arch, and gravelled the others up eighteen inches above the spring. The height of the flood above ordinary level, at the bridge, was fifteen feet, and it was two hundred feet wide. Of four saw-mills, three were entirely ruined; and the works formed along the river for floating the timber completely disappeared; the channel itself being encumbered with large stones which the work of years only could remove. The cottages on the right bank were considered safe; but a clump of alders threw a strong current against them, and three were speedily carried away, with their furniture and gardens. A curious relic was discovered by the flood having swept away about twenty yards of a green bank: this was a square stone building, about six feet wide and five feet high, having nine feet of bank over it. It was, probably, a place of concealment in former times, when the spot was covered with timber." An extraordinary circumstance took place in Loch-namhoon, a small lake, ninety yards long, and fifty yards across, lying in a hollow; the centre of it being filled with a swampy island. During the flood, one of the cross drains of the road sent a stream directly down a hollow, and rushed into the loch with so great force that it undermined and tore up the island; and the surface of the water being thus raised fifteen or twenty feet, and the wind blowing furiously from the northeast, the huge mass was floated and drifted to the southern shore, and stranded on the steep bank, where it now lies like a great carpet, the upper half of it reclining on the slope of the bank, and the lower half resting on the more level ground close to the water's edge. The island is composed chiefly of cotton-grass. rushes, and other aquatic plants, with strongly matted roots, to a depth of about eighteen inches, and having eighteen inches of soil attached to them, making the whole thickness of the solid part of it about three feet. In form it approaches the circular, and is about thirty yards in diameter. One of the most curious facts regarding this strange phenomenon is, that it is perforated by one large hole, five or six yards square, and two of a smaller size, which exactly correspond in magnitude, form, and position, to three hillocks of earth adhering to the bottom of the loch, and appearing above water, which are, in reality, nothing more than three of the roots of the wrecked island." On the river Nairn, a fragment of sandstone rock, fourteen feet long, three feet wide, and one foot thick, and which could not have weighed less than three tons, was carried down the river a distance of two hundred yards. A bridge over the Dee, having five arches, and a waterway of two hundred and sixty feet, which was built of granite, and had stood uninjured for twenty years, was carried away by the flood, and the whole mass disappeared from the bed of the river. Such is the formidable power of water by sudden irruption; the gradual wearing away of solid rocks by its agency is no less striking. In an eruption of Mount Etna, supposed to have been in 1603, a torrent of hard blue lava was ejected from one of the craters near the summit; it crossed the channel of the Simeto, the largest of the Sicilian rivers, and not only occupied the channel, but crossing to the opposite side of the valley, accumulated there in a rocky mass. Now, after the lapse of little more than two centuries, the river has cut a passage for itself through the lava, from fifty to one hundred feet wide, and in some parts from forty to fifty feet deep. After the disastrous floods in Scotland, of which we have spoken, it was deemed advisable to cut through the neck of a peninsula round which the Dorback wound, but which had been much injured by the flood; and this spot having in early times been the scene of a legendary occurrence, the laird was anxious to save it from total destruction. The level of the stream, on the south side of the neck of the peninsula, was about twenty-two feet above that of the stream on the north side; and the bank between rose only about six feet higher than the upper stream; through this neck the cut was to be made. 66 Accordingly, on the 2d of November, six men went to work at eight o'clock in the morning, and by two o'clock in the afternoon they had effected a cut ten yards long, three and a half feet wide, from six to eight feet deep, and with a fall of about four feet from one to the other. The river was at its average size at the time, and a dam of a foot thick, and just of sufficient height to retain the water, was left, like the last pin that supports a vessel about to be launched. A little after four o'clock our party reached the spot. The order was given. A man sprang into the trench, and, with one blow of a pick-axe, the frail barrier yielded to the pressure above, burst at once, and the exulting river would have swept the man before it, had he not escaped with wonderful agility down the trench, with the water at his heels. Nothing could be more interesting or striking than this event, where the effect of a single blow was, in one moment, to produce so great a change in nature's works-a change which, though wrought by a single hand, was in itself, and in its consequences, so vast and so uncontrollable, that, if thousands of men had been on the spot, they could not have turned that river back again. On swept its devouring column, with the low hissing sound of a serpent, but with the force and swiftness of the eagle sweeping to its prey. To resist shouting was impossible. We joined in one hearty hurrah! And when our voices sank, we heard the deadened roar of the river as it poured over the clayey bank, in a fall of fifteen feet, carrying every thing before it, and damming back its own astonished waters, which it met and caught, after their long circuit round the Rhymer's Hill, filling them with the liquid yellow mud into which it was almost entirely converted by the havoc it was committing in its descent. Huge stones were continually rolling down, and some that we pushed in from the side disappeared along the cut with a rapidity which no eye could follow. It was really strange to see the water that came round the Rhymer's Hill gradually ebbing away as the new cut enlarged, until, in half an hour, it was nowhere ankle-deep, except in a few pools, whither the startled trouts were struggling to save themselves. The banks of the cut being undermined, rapidly gave way, falling in large masses at a time; so that when we left the spot, as it grew dark, not quite an hour from the time it was opened, it had already produced an amazing change in its appearance. By eleven o'clock the bottom of the cut was reduced to an inclined plane, and next morning, about fifteen or sixteen hours after the opening was made, it was converted into a wide and complete river-course; and when I saw it at four o'clock in the afternoon, exactly twentyfour hours after the water was let through, it had worked its way back, quite up and across the old course, to the depth of eight feet below the level of its old, and now dry channel." But marine currents are much more striking in their effects than those of a river. In what is called the Grind of the Navir, in the Shetland Isles, the sea is constantly widening a passage between the hard rocks; and at the Faro of Messina the current acts so strongly and quickly upon the granite rocks of the strait, that the fort occupied by the British has been obliged to be removed farther inland. There we find evidences of the The land having formerly been raised; a platform of rock projects into the sea, and the cliff forms a semicircle above it, having at the base a small lake, which is connected with the ocean by a canal, which was cut by the English during their occupation of the fort. alteration in the width of the channel was noticed to a friend of ours by the pilot, who had guided Lord Nelson through it. Great difficulty was experienced in forming the canal above mentioned, on account of the hard nature of the rock; it was accomplished by blasting with pipes. There are marks of glacier action in the granitic boulders which strew the shore. On the eastern coast of England, in Norfolk and Suffolk, a double action appears to be going on. At Sherringham, the sea has encroached so much upon the land, that twenty feet depth of water now flows where within memory was dry land; and at Cromer, the advance of the ocean, is a continual subject of anxiety and expense. We remember within forty years the loss of a village of perhaps twenty houses, by the falling of the cliff; and we have watched from year to year the disappearance of the fields through which the pathway passed which led to the cottages formerly standing upon the edge of the cliff. At Trimmingham, a few miles distant, there are beds of marine shells, and other fossil remains which show the elevation of the land. Again, at Gorleston pier, where the Yare joins the sea, there has occurred a loss of whole fields by the encroachments of the ocean, which flows up to the base of the cliff. We may truly say that for twenty-eight years that we have visited this place, the path to what is called "the common," has been carried farther inland every summer; the common itself is disappearing, bit by bit; and in a few years we shall have lost the only spot in the neighbourhood where the bee-orchis is to be found, and the richest botanical ground (for its size) with which we are acquainted. While this sad work of devastation is proceeding to the south of the mouth of the river, Yarmouth is gradually losing its great attraction, the sea. During a few years, we have noticed the accumulation of flat, fine sands, opposite to the town, with shallow runs of sea water at low tide, making a firm and agreeable promenade. The sea has retired so much, that some steps which twenty years since could not be ascended at high water, are now at a great distance from the sea, and the jetty is becoming useless as a place of landing, except at high tide. On the 25th of May, this year, the sea at low water retired forty feet beyond the end of the jetty, an event which was never known to take place before. Thus it would seem as if the coast of Norfolk between Cromer and Gorleston were rising, while at those two points it appears to be sinking. Something may be allowed for the deposition of sand at a point or promontory; as at Lowestoft the land is also gaining upon the sea. Besides the action of fresh water at the mouths of rivers, traces of floods are to be met with all over the world; traces which we can scarcely refer to the great Noachic deluge, but which are probably to be accounted for by the sudden melting of mountain snows, or the continuance of heavy rains, as in Morayshire. Near the hamlet of Sobrao, in the neighbourhood of Oporto, Portugal, Mr. Kingston found that "on the hills in every direction were scattered immense rounded blocks of dark granite, like the petrified skulls of a race of giants, who might be supposed to have there fallen in some terrific combat." We close our remarks with the Countess HahnHahn's description of the "Rocks of Aderbach;" whether they were brought into their present position by the agency of ice or of water, cannot now be decided. Mrs. Dalton looked round with a smile, and immediately moved to the piano. She put her cousin back with one hand as he offered to escort her, whispering at the same moment, "No, no; I don't want you. I am going to exhibit, so you may talk at your leisure." She sat down, and, under cover of Schulhoff's Galop di Bravura, which was presently electrifying the room, Mr. Thornton returned to the window and to Edith. He began with a platitude, such as even the most brilliant genius must occasionally utter if he be resolved to talk in season and out of season. rise to the height of two hundred and fifty feet, stand | long enough and must now think a little about the upon their smallest base, some singly, some in groups, enjoyment of others." on a marshy meadow-ground, elevated above the surface by a caprice of nature, and rent from the body of the hill: for there are hills enough round about, but their blocks are piled upon one another. Here it appears as though mountain spirits had been attempting with rude hands to copy the forms and works of men; and, dissatisfied with their clumsy and colossal imitations, had flung them down by one another, and half-buried them in the swamp. So fantastic, and to a certain degree, so like are these forms, that you are disposed to believe the guide, when he points out to you, with the gravest look in the world, here the twins,' there the 'mummy,' there the 'veiled nuns,' there, St. John in the wilderness, That little man up yonder, between the stones,' he adds, for your better information. Upon the designations fortress, market-place, cathedral, &c., you hit of yourself; but with deep shame I confess, that it was impossible for me to recognise the 'Breslau wool fair.' "The way through this world of rocks is sometimes extremely narrow, at others it expands into a wider space; in some places the sides are so close that you are obliged to squeeze and stoop to get along. Wooden steps facilitate climbing wherever it is necessary. The most striking point of the labyrinth is the grotto with the waterfall. The bright, cheerful, ever-moving stream suddenly tumbles all affrighted into the dark cellar-like grotto, and thence winds in a thousand toilsome meanders round the foot of the rocks into the open country. On the level plain, a few hundred paces from the entrance, at which the overturned sugarloaf' keeps guard, stands the public-house." F. C. B. THE MAIDEN AUNT.-No. IV.1 CHAP. III. In the evening Edith joined Mrs. Dalton in a window, where, apart from the rest of the company, she seemed to enjoy a reverie. She did not speak, but pointed to the massy outline of a distant hill, behind which the moon was rising, huge, dim, and red; but, in proportion as she departed farther and farther from the earth, seeming to gain in purity what she lost in splendour. The mute symbolism of nature is indeed expressive. Two years ago Edith would have felt that shamefacedness which is the mark of a keen and delicate enthusiasm in woman; she would have shunned to make the silence of her rapture a spectacle for a mixed and unsympathizing party of mere acquaintance. But she had now acquired a fearless freedom of action infinitely more comfortable to herself, and perhaps only to be regretted on account of the mixture of the motives which gave rise to it. She had become so accustomed to be admired for whatever she did, that she had nearly learned to think that every thing she did must be in itself admirable; not that this was the conscious and definite working of her mind, but rather that, being sure of obtaining approbation, she forgot to inquire whether she deserved it or not; she had got the current coin, and she cared not to test the purity of the metal. Yet the adulteration was very slight-quite imperceptible to herself-it was only, in the strictest sense of the word, a beginning. So is an acorn only a beginning, and a small one-but the end of that beginning is the mightiest of trees; and in every beginning the whole progress, development, and final consummation, are, as it were, folded up and contained, ready for gradual expansion. The thought is as full of comfort as of warning, though, alas! the warning is the more needful of the two. "Some music, Amy," said Mr. Thornton's voice, behind the ladies, "you have indulged your meditations (1) Continued from p. 340. "So you prefer moonlight to conversation," said he. "To some conversation," returned the lady, looking very intelligibly at the scattered human beings who adorned the chairs, sofas, and ottomans around her. "But not to all? I am afraid I can scarcely hope to be classed among the exceptions." This timid speech was accompanied by a very decided assumption of the vacant seat next Edith. She laughed slightly, as though she perceived that the words and the movement were a little inconsistent with cach other, and answered frankly, Why, I scarcely think I do prefer even such a scene as this to the conversation which we had with Mrs. Dalton before dinner. It was very interesting." "such mo " "Almost too interesting," replied he; ments unfit one for the trivialities of everyday life and commonplace people. Though all beauty is said to arise out of contrasts, yet there are some contrasts which at once and irremediably destroy beauty;-you would not mix moonlight and lamplight in a picture." "Yet they are very beautiful in reality," said Edith, looking from the brilliant room to the still, silvered woods without. "I suspect," said Mr. Thornton, " that, as in most things which we call beautiful, the charm lies rather in the mind of the interpreter than in the thing interpreted. Is that too philosophical for you?-I know you are a student of German." "I delight in listening to what is beyond my com"Either the mystery prehension," returned Edith. pleases me, or else the feeling that I have the power to reach it if only I have time and help afforded me. So pray go on with your theory-you think that there is no such thing as Beauty, really, but that it all depends upon the mind of the person who is looking. I don't know how to express it; but you see what I mean." 66 Yes," replied he, "what is noonday to you and me would be midnight to a blind man." "It "But the sun is the same," retorted Edith. "Not to you, if you are blind," he answered. is, to you, as if it did not exist. But these analogies are very deceptive; one can't carry them out. To illustrate what I mean by plain facts,-the pagoda which is beautiful to the Chinese would have been monstrous to the Greek; and again, the worshipper in Cologne Cathedral would find little to excite his devotion at Pæstum." "And you believe in none of them?" cried Edith. "Just the reverse," said Thornton, smiling; "I believe in them all. I believe that the elements of truth, goodness, and beauty, are everywhere for those who can see them-the whole, nowhere for any body. To disbelieve in their existence would be as absurd as to restrict them to any particular forms or systems. Some possess more, some less; the man who has emancipated himself from all has the best chance of collecting the fragments which all contain." "I think I understand," said Edith; " I see how this leads naturally to universal toleration." 66 66 True," he replied, toleration-charity-love, becomes the law of life, and Christianity assumes her proper place, as the system containing the highest development of that law which has yet been granted Viewed in this way, can any thing be more ludi to us. crous than the conventional rules which would seek to conform all characters to the same model? Rather find out, in the countless variety of materials submitted to you, those with which your own inner voice accords, and associate yourself with them, if you would attain happi- | ness. All the misery that we see around us seems to me a blunder, not a necessity." 'Nay," said Edith, half doubtingly, "but if we sin we must needs suffer, must we not? Is not that the real cause of misery?" "Every fault," returned he, "brings an inevitable portion of suffering with it, which is the best safeguard against repetition of it. But repentance is in itself restoration; the idea of punishment, except in so far as it is needful to procure amendment, -the idea of retribution is absolutely preposterous. We are all imperfect and in a state of progress, and of that progress purification is a necessary part." "Yes," said Edith," because we have not merely to do what you said just now, to choose the outward circumstances which best suit us, but, as we cannot create circumstances, we have also, and more frequently, to adapt ourselves to them." "Perfectly true," he rejoined. "This is the difficulty of life, and in this its pain consists to those who will persist in refusing to use it rightly. But out of the discord gradually arises a fuller and more glorious harmony." "A glorious harmony! Yes, indeed," cried Mr. Delamaine." You were speaking of Mrs. Dalton's playing. Did you observe how that discord was first prepared and then resolved?" "Some people seem resolved to prepare nothing but discords," murmured Mr. Thornton, with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. But at that moment Mrs. Dalton ceased the marvels with which she had been delighting or deafening her audience, and broke into music of a very different strain, a low, quick accompaniment, like the rustle of abundant leaves, through which the notes of the melody stole like drops of water falling in twilight. You must watch heedfully if you would see each one glisten as it passes; the breathlessness with which you listened | would have moved the repose so essential to musical beauty, but for the lulling stillness of the undersong. Mr. Thornton held up his hands as if imploring silence, and then putting them before his face, seemed to abandon himself to enjoyment. And he did really so abandon himself, that the only reminiscence of his conversation with Edith which flitted across his mind, might have been contained in the following words Strange, that I have been talking philosophy instead of sentiment! I don't believe she will touch me, after all!" Edith's reflections were somewhat deeper. The refined epicureanism to which she had been listening had singular fascinations for her; and it was, moreover, so interwoven with truth that she could not separate the one from the other. Life was then no burden to be borne, no struggle to be encountered. Sorrows were anomalies and exceptions in this system, not chief and necessary parts of it; they were the results of imperfection, to be endured, and surmounted, and forgotten. Sins, if forsaken, were no subjects of grief; discipline was necessary as a means of happiness, not of holiness. Vaguely did these results of the principles presented to her pass before her mind,- -so vaguely that they seemed not to testify to the falsehood of the principles which involved them. Would Edith have entertained these thoughts three years ago? Certainly not. Was she, then, a better logician at eighteen than at one-andtwenty? Scarcely,-her logic at either age did not exceed due feminine limits. But Edith had been living for amusement for three years; living, in fact, to speak plainly and shortly, to and for herself. Her conscience had learned to suggest her actions by the assurance that there was "no harm in them," not by the authoritative injunction, "Do this because it is right." The wo man who leads such a life as this must make up her mind to two dangers :-first, she is sure to encounter temptation; secondly, she is sure to be unprepared for it. The rule of quiet obedience, of childlike faith, of daily self-denial, excludes the evil simply by leaving no room for it. It keeps the heart as in the shadow of some cool and voiceful cloister, and has the twofold virtue, that it is at once a safeguard from temptation and a strengthener against it. But of such a rule Edith had known little at any time, though the kindly influences of her childhood and early youth had in some measure supplied its place; they were, however, rather a shield from the foe than an armour on the body-the shelter was withdrawn, and she was found weaponless. Yet who shall say that with her noble impulses, generous feelings, amiable temper, warm heart, and (to speak in popular phraseology) innocent life, she was not a favourable specimen of her class, sex, and age in this our Christian England? Who, to take lower ground, could expect her even to fear that she was gradually departing from such a standard as Philip Everard carried in his heart of hearts? But we will not anticipate. Mrs. Dalton's fantasia, or whatever it is to be called, came to an end, and Mr. Delamaine was at her side in a moment, begging for a song. She smiled her most bewitching smile, but immediately played an air with variations. "Do you like that?" inquired she, as she concluded. "It is one of Thalberg's." "Oh-ah-yes-indeed," was his reply, "I should have recognised it immediately. So orchestral-there is no mistaking his style." Mrs. Dalton looked a little mischievous, and Lord Vaughan, as he read on the title-page of the music the name of Mendelssohn, smiled to her with the open and gleeful significance of one who is not often in the secret of a private morsel of satire, and who inwardly congratulates himself on understanding it. "But," pursued Mr. Delamaine, " you used to sing 'Ah luce di quest' anima!' used you not? You have not forgotten it?" "Oh, no," answered she, graciously: "music that I have once learned keeps a most pertinacious hold on my memory." "I am sure it is here; do let me find it for you," cried her persevering admirer, dropping suddenly down on his knees before the music-stand, thereby causing Lady Selcombe to start, and dislodging from her lap a perfect avalanche of coloured wools. Having duly apologized for and repaired his misdeed, he proceeded to institute a vigorous search for the song, during which Mrs. Dalton chatted about music with Lord Vaughan and Sir Mark Wyvil, and finally began to play Irish airs, with intense feeling and variety of expression. "Ah luce di quest' anima" was at length found, and placed before her; she acknowledged the service by another smile and a most grateful bow, but continued to play without heeding it for at least half an hour. Then, leaving her chair, she addressed a young lady who was seated near the piano, listening to her with a kind of sullen and reluctant admiration, "My dear Miss Mainwaring," said she, "Mr. Delamaine is longing to hear you sing this song. We all know it is one of your favourites. Now, pray oblige us—as for me, I am really quite tired." She retreated as she spoke, and spent the rest of the evening in walking on the terrace, whither she would not allow either Edith or Mr. Thornton to follow her. Miss Mainwaring, who was cultivated and commonplace, obliged the company with untiring assiduity, and Mr. Delamaine, though looking at first a little blank, was politely attentive and vivaciously critical. Ere they separated for the night, however, Mrs. Dalton approached one of the open windows, and leaning her arms upon the sill, warbled Mozart's pretty and familiar "Buona notte, buona notte amato bene!" without accompaniment, with a richness and delicacy which astonished even those who were best acquainted with the wonderful beauty of her voice. The music was |