and deliberately preferring this fearful alternative, to any sort of communication with Lady Dighton. How long she would have persevered in this determination, had there been no means of conveying food to her, is probably very doubtful; but it is very likely that it might have continued till she was too weak to remove the heavy fastenings. It was evident that she never ceased to believe that her life would be sacrificed the moment she admitted her jailer.

'But,' said I, 'did you not take hope from her regularly supplying you with food, linen, lights, and everything you could require?'

'Never,' she answered. I believed it was all done to entrap me, and because even her stony heart could not endure to leave me to die without help. Many notes were written to me with entreaties, promises, even solemn oaths-but how could I trust her after what I had seen: my only friend, the only person who had ever loved me, helpless in his bed '

And here she stopped, as she always did when she approached the subject of the murder. I wondered that the idea of poison seemed never to have occurred to her, but I afterwards found that it had been present with her during the whole of her imprisonment; but she had fortunately imbibed some ignorant notion that it could only be conveyed in liquids. She drank nothing but water and tea, which she had means of preparing for herself; and she said that there were dozens of wine, with which she had been supplied at different times, standing in one of the many closets in the chambers. She was regularly supplied with books, which she used to return when read; and one of her few amusements was to make extracts from them. She knitted stockings and mittens for herself; and having been furnished with a pack of cards, she played a great deal at a solitary game called Patience. There was a singular sort of quietness in her disposition and habits, which must have been partly natural to her, though, of course, it had been greatly nourished and increased by the strange solitude of her life. A mind of any superior stamp could never have succumbed, as hers did, into the dead calm in which she appears to have spent the greater portion of her time; and one of only average energy and spirit would assuredly have resisted, in some measure, the numbing influences which surrounded her, and have gained as much as, under such cruel disadvantages, could be acquired from books, mental effort, and memory. On the other hand, a more sensitive and impulsive temperament would, no doubt, have suffered fearfully in mind and body, perhaps even to insanity or death. Grace Wilson had, however, a peculiar and decided stillness of character, most singularly suited to the extraordinary trial she was destined to undergo. She had good moderate abilities, and had so far profited by the education Sir Thomas had secured to her, that she could read and write very fairly; it was plain that she had not been either an idle or a stupid child up to the moment in which she was separated from all her fellow-beings; but it was equally evident that she had made little or no progress beyond that moment. As I knew her better, I perceived more and more that she had good common sense, a kind and grateful heart, and an honest and truthful nature; but she evinced no wish to improve herself, and was, in many respects, supine even to dulness. She had obediently, and probably very slowly, learned whatever had been taught her, and she carried the results of that teaching into her prison; if she added to them at all, it was done insensibly, and without any particular effort of her own. The quietude of her nature was, I suppose, physically a preservative to her, for, strange to say, her health never suffered, and although, as she got older, she grew fat and heavy, she had never needed, nor taken, any kind of medicine.

We spent several months together while Captain Sinclair was endeavouring to arrange the perplexing business that had fallen upon him, and to make up

his mind as to the future. In accordance with the advice of Mr Davis, to whom he turned almost helplessly for guidance, he requested me to go with Grace and my pupils to a distant town, where we were wholly unknown. Lady Dighton had left him a large fortune, but she was correct in her conviction that he would never profit by the bequest. However, in a letter which was found with her will, she stated that having ascertained that she could secure any legacies she might leave to Ellen and Janet, and their heirs, so that their father could have no power to reject them, she had accordingly directed the lawyer, with whom she had communicated by letter on the subject of her will, to divide twenty thousand pounds of her funded property between them, under stringent conditions in the hands of trustees. Except these legacies to his daughters, Captain Sinclair retained only a third ten thousand pounds, which he felt more than justified in settling upon Grace Wilson. The whole of the large remainder of Lady Dighton's settlement, after all necessary expenses had been defrayed, he paid over to the heir of the baronetcy and its hereditary estates. He had only two friends whom he could consult in his heavy troubles, and they were those who had been the unconscious means of bringing them upon him. Both Mr Davis and Mr M'Ilvar, while they agreed in the propriety of his honourable resignation of Lady Dighton's bequest to himself, united in urging him to avail himself of an offer from the trustees of his children, of whom Mr Dalton was one, to allow a large portion of the interest of their legacies for their board and education; and he ultimately yielded, in some measure, to their arguments, but it was with painful reluctance. Mr M'Ilvar, feeling that he had brought so much suffering upon a most amiable and high-principled man, exerted all his interest, which was considerable, to procure for him some situation under government, and nothing could have accorded better with poor Captain Sinclair's wishes than the consulship offered to him at a port in the east of Europe. It removed him from England, which had become hateful to him, and from all possibility of intercourse with the few who were acquainted with Lady Dighton's story. never could be induced to see Grace Wilson, and he did not meet me again till he came only for a few hours after we had removed to a lodging recommended by the Daltons in a distant village. He was a sadly changed man, and I could see almost in the first greeting that his manner was totally altered towards me. He was most grateful and liberal, and meant to be very kind, but he could not meet my eye, and seemed to dread every word I said to him. His plans were then unsettled, and soon afterwards came the offer from Mr M'Ilvar of which I have just spoken. Mr Davis told me that it made another man of him.' He brightened up from that moment, gave an immediate and most thankful answer in assent, and employed himself incessantly in preparations for a speedy departure to his official post.

He

When all was completed, he came to fetch his daughters. He was much overcome when he parted from me; and Ellen and Janet were as sorry as such young girls could be with a prospect before them which their father had in his letters depicted in the most favourable colours. We parted: I felt that it was a final parting, and such it proved to be. His liberality towards me had been far beyond what I could either expect or accept, and I believe he had a real regard and esteem for me; but I was not surprised when our intercourse by letter gradually died away. The girls wrote frequently and affectionately to me for a few months, but their letters became more and more brief and far between, and in less than two years ceased altogether. I have occasionally heard of them, and I believe that both are well married to foreigners. Their father is always spoken of with respect and esteem.

I had consented to remain with Grace Wilson for at least twelve months after Captain Sinclair's departure from England. We went on very quietly and very amicably together; and I have little to add to what I have already said of her, except that, owing, I suppose, to a more healthy and natural mode of life, she improved very considerably in her personal appearance. She lost much of her disfiguring fat, and her complexion became healthy looking, with a slight tinge of colour. Her eyes were larger and brighter, and she had no longer a heavy expression of countenance, nor a dragging, loitering way of walking and moving. Certainly, I could have made poor Grace a far more interesting personage if I were composing a tale, instead of narrating actual occurrences for the private perusal of a few friends. Nevertheless, the termination of her story is, under all the circumstances which render it so peculiar, sufficiently strange for any novel, and so little to be expected, that I feel half afraid to relate it.

The village in which we had fixed our temporary residence was in a very retired and agricultural part of the west of England. We there, in the course of a few months, became acquainted with a young man in whom I soon felt greatly interested. He was the only child of a very respectable small farmer, and had been deaf and dumb from his birth. He had been well educated among others as unfortunate as himself. His manners were pleasing and gentle, and, notwithstanding his natural defects, he was reckoned a very clever farmer, and was popular among his father's labourers, who had established modes of communication with him which answered most of the purposes of ordinary conversation. We knew his mother, in the first instance, owing to her supplying us with milk and poultry. She was an excellent, sensible, well-mannered woman. The father was a rougher sort of person, but a truly good and kind-hearted man. Both doted on their unfortunate son, and I soon won their hearts by my knowledge of the fingeralphabet. The son was anxious to improve himself in drawing, and I undertook to assist him; I lent him books, and found him quick, intelligent, and perfectly unpresuming. Our intimacy increased, Grace had learned the finger-alphabet, and she and the young man were a good deal together. One morning I was surprised by a visit from the father, and thoroughly puzzled by his making me a long and confused speech about his poor boy, as he called him, the object of which I could not for some time conceive, until at length, after many attempts, and much circumlocution, he blundered out the plain words, that he feared his poor boy was greatly taken with Miss Wilson. In a moment I perceived how very blind I had been; a thousand little circumstances came back to my recollection that I had scarcely noticed at the time of their occurrence, and foremost among them was so vivid a remembrance of Grace's unusual quickness and perseverance in acquiring the finger-alphabet, that I suspected there would be no reluctance on her part. This point was soon decided, as I had anticipated. Her fortune was a great surprise to her lover and his parents, as they had naturally supposed that she was dependent upon me. I explained it and her want of relatives by the simple truth that she was the illegitimate child of a deceased gentleman of large property. When Captain Sinclair made over the money to her, he stipulated only-and it was more an entreaty than a condition-that she would faithfully observe total silence on all points connected with his unhappy wife. I assured him that he might firmly depend on Grace's performance of the solemn promise which she then made to him through me. Everything relating to her sufferings at Greyfriars became more and more distressing and painful to her, and there was a security in the pledge he required of her which was evidently a relief to her mind. Could I part from my charge under more favourable

auspices? A deaf and dumb husband, with no near relatives except an old father and mother, without a particle of suspicion, or even curiosity, in their nature. I had for some time begun to feel that I might be much fettered by the singular circumstances connected with my protection of this poor girl, and although I had become really much attached to her, I confess that a great burden was lifted from my mind when I saw her so happily married. Her husband worshipped her, and thought himself the most fortunate of mankind. They had a pretty house and small farm very near the old homestead, and in due course of time were blessed with three children, none of whom inherited their father's misfortune. Grace writes to me two or three times a year, and I have twice visited them. A happier household I never saw, nor a more loving old grandfather and grandmother. I will only add to my story that I have lately heard that Greyfriars is levelled to the ground, and a new house is building nearly on the same site. I do not know whether the inevitable discovery of the concealed apartments created any sensation in the neighbourhood, for the Daltons are removed to another and far-distant living, and I have no communication whatever with the place itself. All the sin and suffering those walls contained may seem to have perished with them; but though sorrow may pass away, crime and its consequences cannot be crushed and extinguished. There is a nameless horror in every memory connected with Lady Dighton, whether dead or living. Mrs Dalton told me that Captain Sinclair had added but three words to the name of his wife on the stone that covered her remains. These words are-‘God is merciful!'

WIND.

ALL true power is simple in its grandeur, and grand in its simplicity; this is especially the case with Nature in all her workings: she moves not with sudden start, but with calm progression. Even when she seems most perturbed, her agitation is but the disguise of her order.

There is none of the forces that rule the material world which appears so arbitrary and uncertain as the wind that bloweth where it listeth; yet is there none more clearly subject to fixed laws, or more beautifully dependent upon settled causes. Whether it be the tornado uprooting the forest, the zephyr just stirring the leaves, the simoom of the desert, or the monsoon of the ocean, all wind is the result of agencies directly traceable to their sources. It does not disturb the harmony of creation-it preserves it.

There are two properties of air which combine in producing wind-its capability of expansion by heat, and its elasticity. Air is not heated at the top by the rays of the sun; they pass through it with very little effect. But when they meet and are stopped by the earth, they heat the earth so much that the air immediately over its surface becomes much hotter than that above. Now, because hot air must expand, the heated portion rises to the top, overflowing the colder air around it; but this creates a diminished density below, and the surrounding cold air, by its own elasticity, rushes in to supply the deficiency. Thus is caused wind: an inward rush of cold air below, an outward rush of warm air above.

This may be illustrated and proved by the following

simple experiment. Light a fire in one of two rooms having a door of communication between them. When the room has become warm, open the door, and hold a lighted candle in the doorway. It will be found that, on holding the candle near the floor, the flame

will be strongly drawn towards the heated room by the incoming current of cold air, while near the ceiling it will be driven towards the cold room by the outgoing current of hot air. In the middle, at the point exactly between the two currents, the flame will be almost stationary.

The power of the sun to heat the earth is, of course, greater in places under its vertical than under its oblique rays. At the equator, therefore, the air is always rising from its heat; consequently, the cold air of the poles is continually rushing each way towards the equator, along the surface of the earth, while at the top of the atmosphere the hot air of the equator is constantly rushing towards the poles.

The question naturally arises here-How comes it to pass, then, that the winds in our own country and the temperate zones generally, blow often from the equator towards the poles? The reason is simple. The overflowing current of hot air from the equator becomes cooled in travelling through space; by the time it reaches the 30th parallel of latitude in either hemisphere, or thereabouts, it is colder than the current rolling in the opposite direction below, the tendency of which is, of course, to get warmer in its progress; accordingly, the currents change places, and that which was the upper becomes the under, with a contrary movement. About the polar circle, their relative position is again changed by like causes, and the air which was uppermost at the equator resumes its place above. Warm air from all points converges and descends upon the poles, the cold air of which sinks and spreads in every direction, giving rise to the polar gales common in high latitudes; so that at the poles there is a constantly descending current of hot air, while at the equator there is a constantly ascending stream.

So far as we have gone at present, we have accounted only for winds to and from the equator and polesthat is, for north and south winds. What, then, occasions easterly and westerly winds?

These arise from the influence of a totally different force-namely, the earth's rotation on its axis. The earth is constantly rolling round from west to east with great velocity. As the earth is spherical, this velocity gradually decreases from the equator, where the speed is greatest, to the poles, at which it is nothing. Now, when the cold air is driven towards the equator in the manner before explained, it receives no increase of momentum eastward, and therefore the nearer it gets to the equator, the more it is left behind in the west by the quicker advance eastward of the earth's surface there; hence its current becomes a north-east or south-east wind. The westerly winds are the converse of this. The hot air rolling from the equator towards the poles with a strong easterly direction gets far in advance of the more slowly moving earth there, and blows more and more from the west.

Such is an outline of the general laws which rule the course of the wind. By their operation, a constant and wonderful circulation of currents is kept up in the atmosphere, purifying and regulating its temperature. Just as in the human body the life-blood travels through every part, giving vitality and strength to the whole, so the air, which may be truly called the vital current of the world, is in constant motion. It visits every clime, to bless mankind with health and energy, to roll the clouds of heaven, bringing the showers that raise the blossoms of spring and the fruits of autumn, and to waft from shore to shore ships laden with the riches of the earth.

These general laws are nevertheless subject to many modifying influences, such as screening clouds and the difference of seasons, which decrease the heating power of the sun on the earth, and vary the relative warmth of the currents in different places. The unequal and irregular distribution of land and water also exerts a disturbing influence; for the surface of

the earth becomes much more rapidly heated than that of the sea, and cools much more quickly. Thus the presence of large continents or oceans affects the direction of the wind.

This

To this last influence is due the refreshing seabreeze, so ardently longed for by those condemned to remain in London during the dog-days. On a hot day, the air over the sea is much cooler than that on land, and so there blows a delicious breeze from sea to shore; but, as land cools more quickly than water, after sunset the land-breeze blows, from shore to sea. may be easily understood and illustrated by placing a saucer of warm water, to represent land, in a dish of cold, to represent sea. The flame or smoke of a candle will be blown from every side towards the saucer by a mimic sea-breeze. If you fill the dish with warm, and the saucer with cold water, an exactly opposite effect will be produced, corresponding to the land-breeze.

The great subject of wind has been but just glanced at here; a volume might be written upon what is known concerning it, and much remains to be discovered as to the causes of whirlwinds, hurricanes, and storms of all kinds, as well as of various local winds, confined to certain countries or parallels of latitude. Many interesting fields of inquiry lie open to the student, and many ardent votaries of science are eagerly exploring them; but from every fresh discovery we learn again the old lesson with which we set out, that Nature, even in her wildest mood, works in harmony. It was this lesson which the poetic imagination of the old Greeks taught by their legend of the music of the spheres; and every inves tigation from their days to ours has confirmed it to the seekers after wisdom.

LAVATER AND PHYSIOGNOMY. THE practice of physiognomy is as old as it is universal. Everybody judges by faces, is attracted or repelled by looks; even dogs discriminate a kind from an unkind glance, and their friends from their foes among strangers. Physiognomy is a common instinct, whose laws it is easier to practise than to define. You like that face; why? You say that tree is beautiful; why? The ready answer is the woman's reason: Because I do. That is a reason, however, which satisfies no thinker, and a science of faces has been the attempt of philosophers more frequently than even a science of beauty. It is said that physiognomy was cultivated as a science in old Egypt and India, and that Pythagoras imported it from Egypt to Greece. Certain it is that seekers for entrance to a Pythagorean school were subjected to a physiognomical examination, on the result of which their success depended. Plato and Aristotle speak largely of the face and body as signs and expressions of the mind. Cicero, too, had a faith in physiognomy. Amongst the Romans, indeed, it became a profession, mixed up, however, with divination and various superstitions. Suetonius relates that Narcissus employed a physiognomist to examine the features of Britannicus, and to predict from them. In the middle ages, physiognomy absorbed great attention, and, down to the middle of last century, was every now and then breaking into a fashionable study, under the impulse of some enthusiastic practitioner or other. It is quite amazing to find how much ancient, middle, and modern age thought has been expended on a science which now a days we hear so little of, and that little only in connection with Lavater.

Any year in the last quarter of last century, had you been travelling in Switzerland, you must needs have visited Zurich, were it for nothing else than to see Lavater, who, in right of a European celebrity, was the lion of that quaint little city, in which he was born in 1741, in which he lived and laboured, and in 1801 died, a thorough Zurich man. Easily accessible, you would visit him if possible at his house, and if not, hear him preach in St Peter's, or catch a glimpse of him in the streets. You would see a spare figure, a face feminine in its delicacy, alive with spirituality and intelligence, and suffused with an overflowing tenderness. Keen, enthusiastic, vivacious,

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impulsive, reverent, credulous, and gentle as a child, was Lavater; a man of prodigious industry; versatile, yet methodical; concerned with many things, yet keeping each to its hour and place, and giving to each his whole heart. He kept up an immense correspondence, wrote books, wrote poetry, meddled with politics, preached and visited, and accomplished an amount of work which those who knew neither his energy nor his system would have pronounced incredible. To his pastoral duties he devoted himself as though they were his sole care, and with great success. By his flock, he was esteemed and loved, and the simple country people in his walks used to draw near and kiss his hands. It was common to speak of him as the German Fenelon, and between Fenelon and Lavater there were many points of resemblance both mental and physical. In Fenelon, however, there was a measured composure and quiet which did not belong to the restless, bustling, aggressive Swiss. One day, Madame de Staël was walking with him, when a German lady accosted them, and exclaimed: 'How our dear Lavater resembles Fenelon ! Don't you see in him Fenelon's features, his air, his character! He is indeed Fenelon over again; and yet Fenelon with a little of the Swiss!' The lady was right, had she said, 'with a great deal of the Swiss.'

As theologian, as poet, as preacher, as politician, Lavater did not acquire his universal fame, but from a pursuit which, contrasted with what he esteemed the business of his life, he called his 'pipe and tobacco.' A man delicately organised like Lavater has usually an acute sense of character; the presence of those he likes is an exquisite pleasure, and of those he dislikes, an exquisite pain; sensations which, to a man of coarser fibre, are either incredible or incomprehensible. As Lavater advanced in life, he began to exercise his reason on his sensations, and to record, compare, and arrange them. He collected portraits on all hands, tested his own opinions on them with those of his friends, and soon became known as an adept in divining character from the face, body, and manners. He drew his conclusions not from the face alone, but from the whole of a man's surroundings-from his dress, his gait, his handwriting, his furniture; holding that the mind expressed itself not only in the body, but in everything affected by its influence. He told Goethe, that in carrying round the velvet-bag in church as collector