the thousand-and-one (sometimes very extensive) conspiracies which, while the Villèle ministry remained in power, every day brought forth, though only to be crushed. He calmly waited till the time should come when he might with safety, and some prospect of success, take a part in public affairs. Meanwhile, historical studies, and the preparation of historical works, kept him constantly employed. In 1823 appeared his Essays on the History of France, and the first volumes of two grand collections of memoirs, one relating to the great English revolution, the other to the early history of France: these, as they were published serially, demanded his almost undivided attention for a considerable period. Yet his industry did not altogether hinder him from enjoying social life; and though he was poor, his visitors were not solely-strange as it may seem to an Englishman-from the ranks of the indigent and obscure. It is of the Guizot of that period that a writer in Fraser's Magazine thus speaks:-Small were his apartments-far, far too small to admit the crowds of literati who sought to claim the honour of his acquaintance, or who, having made, were not willing to lose it. On his reception-nights, the small street at the back of the Madeleine in which he resided was crowded with carriages, as well as all the contiguous streets; and his visitors moved more quickly from one little room to another than they otherwise would have done, because they felt that they owed this act of courtesy to those who came pressing after them. If it had been the drawing-room of a young and beautiful queen, or the levee of a popular and distinguished cabinet minister, no anxiety to be admitted, to speak, to exchange looks, could have been more closely and strongly marked than on these occasions. Madame Guizot, and one or two female friends-often the late Duchess de Broglie, the Lady Peel of France-presided at a tea-table, where the simplest fare was distributed by pretty taper fingers, which even vied with bright eyes and enchanting smiles. Yet were those entertainments sumptuous with wit, with poetry, with philosophy, and with the best life of good society and of the élite of Paris. But death here also has intruded too frequently to permit me to think upon those once happy reunions; and the dear little house in the Rue de l'Evesque has witnessed tears and sobs, and agonies of grief, which none can portray, and which even few can feel.' This allusion is to Guizot's loss of the beloved companion both of his toils and his enjoyments, not long before that of their only child. Madame Guizot had been unwell during a considerable portion of 1826. With the new year, it was evident that she was slowly sinking. On the 30th July 1827, she perceived that her end was at hand: she summoned her son and her friends to her side, and bade them farewell-the former was soon to follow her to the tomb. On the morning of the next day she asked her husband to read to her; he took down a volume of Bossuet, and began the funeral oration of Henrietta Maria of England; when he had finished, he looked towards her, and saw that she was no more. We must now hurry on. The year which was marked by this domestic calamity was also that of Guizot's return to politics. Perhaps his chief motive for this is to be found in the fact, that he was now forty years of age, and therefore qualified to enter the Chamber of Deputies. In 1828 he established the Revue Française, as an organ for the expression of his opinions, and he became an active member of the Aide-toi Society, then just formed, the objects and procedure of which were quite in accordance with his views. It was founded to protect the electoral system from the assaults of the Villèle ministry. Nothing could be less revolutionary than the mode in which it sought its end, by appealing, namely, but with the cumulative force which is the great result of association, whenever the law was infringed, to the authorised legal tribunals. *In full-Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera-' Help thyself, and Heaven will help thee.' In the January of 1828, the liberal ministry of M. de Martignac displaced that of Villèle, and one of its first acts was to restore Guizot his chair. It was now, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of a brilliant audience, that he began his well-known lectures on the History of Modern Civilisation in Europe. With the August of 1829, the Polignac ministry came into office; its subsequent history is familiar to our readers. Guizot threw himself energetically into opposition, attacking with his vigorous pen, in the columns of the Temps, and the Journal des Débats, the policy of that too famous administration. Chosen deputy by the electoral college of Lisieux in the January of 1830, he was among the protesting 221. He returned from Nismes to Paris on the 26th of July, to learn the publication of those ordinances which cost Charles X. a throne. On the 27th, at the meeting of deputies held at Casimir Périer's house, the protest drawn up by Guizot was the one agreed on to be signed. He was the author also of the address in which, on the 28th, the Duke of Orleans was invited to undertake the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the last of the Three Days, it was Guizot that proposed the appointment of a commission to secure the maintenance of order. On the 30th, he was named by it provisional minister of public instruction; and at the accession of Louis-Philippe, he accepted the most important and difficult post of all, that of minister of the interior. Guizot's career since the revolution of 1830 belongs not to biography but to history. Yet we must not conclude without at least alluding to the benefits which, as minister of public instruction, he has conferred on his country. Perhaps we cannot better close this slight sketch than by quoting, from his circular to the instructors of youth then under his jurisdiction, the following noble passage:-There is no fortune to be made, scarcely any reputation, in the round of those laborious duties which the teacher performs. Destined to behold his life glide on in monotonous toil, sometimes to meet with, in those around him, the injustice or the ingratitude of ignorance, he would often mourn, and perhaps despair, if his strength and courage were brought from no other source than the calculation of his immediate and purely selfish interest. A deep feeling of the moral importance of his labours must sustain and inspire him. In the austere pleasure of serving men, and contributing in secret to the public weal, let him find his worthiest recompense, one which only his conscience gives him. His glory is to aspire to nothing beyond the sphere of his obscure and laborious avocations; to exhaust himself in sacrifices little heeded by those who profit by them; in fine, to toil for men, and look for his reward to Heaven alone.' WEST INDIA MAIL. HAVING, in a late number of the Journal, given an account of the East India mail, we now proceed to detail a few particulars respecting the mail to and from the West Indies, which, it is hoped, will prove interesting to all, and possibly new to many, of our readers. The mails for these important colonial possessions and foreign places are made up in London on the 2d and 17th of every month. Letters posted in London up till eight o'clock on either of these mornings are in time for the packet. The mails are conveyed by the SouthWestern Railway to Southampton, where they arrive about mid-day, and are transferred, without delay, by means of a small steamer, to one of the splendid steam ships belonging to the Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company; which transatlantic steamer, having her steam up, and all in readiness, at once proceeds on her voyage. A gigantic undertaking is this line of West India steam-packets. There are eighteen vessels, the largest of which are about 2000 tons burthen, gross measurement. Fitted up in the most handsome and comfortable manner, a West India mail-packet is capable of carrying about 100 passengers, to each of whom a separate sleeping berth is allowed. What a contrast to the old pent-up sailing packets! Besides the amount of passagemoney now being less, and the time occupied only about one half, the great comfort and ease with which a passenger can stretch his legs' on board the steamers, can only be truly felt by an old voyageur in one of the late sailing craft. Each out-steamer, after leaving Southampton, proceeds to Funchal in Madeira. The run to this place, 1287 miles, occupies seven days. Mails and passengers are landed here in a few hours; and fresh meat, eggs, and fruit having been obtained, the steamer directs her course across the Atlantic. day for home-mails, the steamer proceeds to Grenada, which she reaches in about fifteen hours. The total distance from Southampton to Grenada, called route No. 1, | is 4037 nautical miles, and is performed in twenty-three days, including the stoppages. Grenada is the principal place where the mail-packets meet to exchange the different mails, replenish coal, water, and other stores, and refit after long voyages. These objects being all accomplished, and all in readiness, before the packet arrives from England a delay of not more than twelve hours occurs in the transfer to the respective branch packets.* All the mail-steamers described in the subjoined note work in together, keeping up one grand combination, affording to all places mentioned opportunities, some twice, others once a month, of receiving letters both from Europe and interinsularly, of transmitting replies thereto, and of transit to travellers going in any direction. Now we can calculate almost to an hour when advices will reach us-a circumstance of the highest importance to the commercial world: regularity, rather than fits and starts of celerity, being the great desideratum. The island of Madeira has lately become a great resort of invalids from England; and no wonder, seeing what different residents at that place state as to the nature of the climate. One writer in the Monthly Repository of 1834 says, 'People ought to be happy here.' The author of Six Months in the West Indies observes, I should think the situation of Madeira the most enviable in the world. It insures almost every European comfort, with almost every tropical luxury. Any degree of temperature may be enjoyed. The seasons are the youth, maturity, and old age of a neverending, still-beginning spring.' Sir James Clark, in his valuable work on the Sanative Influence of Climate, writes as follows:- Madeira has been long held in high estimation for the mildness and equability of its climate; *The dispersion takes place in the following order :-On route and we shall find, on comparing this with the climate 2, a packet starts fortnightly from Barbadoes, with out-mails for of the most favoured situations on the continent of Tobago and Demerara, where she stops a week; then returns with Europe, that the character is well founded.' Dr He-home-mails to Tobago, Grenada (where the home-mails are deposited), and Barbadoes. neikin says, Could I enjoy, for a few years, a perpetual Madeira summer, I should confidently anticipate the most beneficial results.' Letters can be despatched on the 2d and 17th from London for Barbadoes, Grenada, St Thomas, and Bermuda, and answers will be received back in fifty days; (despatched 17th) New Grenada and Guatemala, in On route 3, one starts fortnightly from Grenada with the outmails for Trinidad, where she remains nine days; then returns with home-mails to Grenada. On route 4, one starts fortnightly from Grenada with the outmails for St Vincent, St Lucia, Martinique (French), Dominica, Guadaloupe (French), Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St Kitt's, Tortolla, St Thomas (Danish), and Puerto Rico (Spanish). At this latter place the stoppage of the steamer is only a few hours, after which she returns to St Thomas to coal; afterwards calling at each island already mentioned, on her way back to Grenada. On route 5, one starts fortnightly from Grenada with the outmails for Jacmel (Haytien), Jamaica, and St Jago de Cuba (Spanish). Here the stop is two days, when she returns to Jamaica to coal; and after having allowed this island eight days from the first arrival there, for receiving replies from the interior, she returns to Jacmel; thence proceeds to Puerto Rico and St Thomas. The Guide to the West Indies, &c. thus contrasts the approach of the steamer to Barbadoes with that of the intrepid Columbus :- Onward ploughs the giant ship. What to her are the winds? She heeds them not! The waves? They are but her highway! Onward she goes; untiring, unresting, with steady purpose. What to us in this noble ship were the fears, the superstitions, the terrors of those who accompanied that man who first sought, through these waters, the new world?-who, with firm faith, on that eventful 3d of August 1492, pushed off his three small ships-one only of which was completely decked-to seek that new world which had for years existed in his thought, and flourished in his imagination. We are not to be terri-impracticable, the bar at the entrance, outside of which the steamer fied by fancied shrieks in the wind, or of hostile armies imaged in the clouds. The change in the direction of the compass does not fill us with dread; nor do we suppose that the masses of sea-weed that may encircle us are sent by spirits of evil to bar our approach! To us these things are as idle dreams; but they were strong and fearful realities to those lone men in their little vessels who first entered those seas. They were realities to all but him whose firmness, decision, and indomitable will led them on, in firm trust in that God whose religion he sought to establish in a world unknown. What must have been his thoughts and feelings when, after many years of contest and delay, he stood among his superstitious crew, in the middle of night, on his vessel's deck, and for the first time saw a moving light on shore: Pedro, Rodrigo! there methought it shone! On route 6, one starts monthly from Jamaica with the out-mails for Havannah (Spanish), where she coals, Vera Cruz, and Tampico (both Mexican); at this place she remains from five to ten days, according as shipments can be effected, which are often almost anchors, being often impassable, especially when one of the violent and dreaded northers' sets in. At this place, and also Vera Cruz, very large shipments of specie take place, there being sometimes an amount exceeding two and a half million dollars sent on boardcoming from the mines in the interior for England-at one time. After waiting off Tampico long enough, the packet returns to Vera Cruz and Havannah. Here she re-coals, then proceeds to Nassau and Bermuda, where she coals up for the Atlantic voyage; then proceeds direct to Southampton, arriving there on the 7th of each month. On route 7, one starts monthly from St Thomas with the out, as well as home-mails, for Bermuda. Here she lands the out-mails, and delivers the home-mails to the last-mentioned ship, going (as in route 5) to England; then coals, and proceeds to Nassau, Havan nah, and Jamaica. On route 8, one starts monthly from St Thomas with all the col lected home-mails, proceeding via Fayal to Southampton, arriving there on the 22d of each month. On route 9, one starts monthly from Grenada with the out-mails for La Guayra and Puerto Cabello, stops there two days, and returns to La Guayra; then to St Thomas and Grenada. On route 10, one starts monthly from Jamaica with the out-mails for Santa Martha, Carthagena, Chagres, and San Juan de Nicaragua, in the newly-acquired British territory on the Mosquito shore. This latter has been taken possession of by our government, to secure to this country a means of crossing to the Pacific, by way of the San Juan river, independent of any adverse state. Although done without noise, this is nevertheless a most important step to this country; one which shows that our rulers have their eyes open to the future political as well as commercial benefits that will result from the possession of this key to the Pacific! But to return to No. 10 steamer: she proceeds, after a day's stop at San Juan, to Jamaica with mails for England, calling at each place already men tioned on the backward route. On route 11, one starts monthly with out-mails from Havannah * At those places marked in italics, the packets meet to exchange for Belize in Honduras; stops a few days; thence returns to Haoutward, homeward, and inter-colonial mails. vannah. eighty days; (despatched 2d) Mexico and Honduras, in ninety-five days; (despatched 2d and 17th) all other places in sixty-five days. The fare to Madeira is L.22, or L.30; to Barbadoes L.32, or L.42; to Jamaica L.40, or L.50; and to other places in proportion to the distance. These certainly are very moderate rates for travelling such long distances. To Mexico, the country farthest away, an expanse of sea exceeding 7000 miles has to be traversed. It appears, however, that for upwards of the three years these steam-ships have been constantly at sea (during which time 154 voyages have been performed out and home, only a few of which occupied more than the time now allowed), many of them have run over a space of 115,000 miles respectively-more than four times round the world-yet in no instance has the least mishap to a single pin of their gigantic machinery occurred. This certainly goes to prove the superior construction of the ships and engines, and correctness of the officers in command. The very Atlantic may now be said to be timed, as by a railway! THE GREEK STAGE. THE novel and successful attempt which has been recently made in London to excite sympathy amongst an English audience for one of the lofty tragedies of Greece, may perhaps render acceptable a short sketch of the stage performances of the ancients. The same play has met with a gratifying reception in the capitals of France and Prussia; and it is stated that, under royal command, another Greek drama is shortly to be performed. Wonderful is it that plays produced considerably more than two thousand years ago, should, in spite of time, retain a power to delight in an eminent degree people of other lands and other languages. But our wonder will abate if we consider for a moment that it is one of the main attributes of genius to be ever fresh and inviting. We cannot glance round our libraries without perceiving that genius had contracted divine aspirations after the future, and, looking earnestly forwards, had written as much for posterity as for the present. Hitherto, the Greek plays have been conned as tasks in dusky studies, or enjoyed by the learned few; but it has now been shown that they contain matter fitted to delight the minds of the many. It may now be seen that Greek keeps concealed in its crabbed characters a peculiar manifestation of interest which we may look for in vain elsewhere, and even when adequately expressed through the medium of a translation. What has our own Milton said in praise of the Greek tragic writers? Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In Chorus and Iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received, In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of Fate and Chance and change in human life; High actions and high passions best describing.' But this was not all that Milton was pleased to say upon this topic. Tragedy' (we transcribe from the proem to Samson Agonistes, a drama written after the old models) Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of these and such-like passions; that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure, with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which, in the account of many, it undergoes at this day, with other common interludes.' They who assign to the drama no higher part in Grecian life than it plays in ours, are most grievously at fault. Inasmuch as amongst the Greeks the drama held a conspicuous position in their religious economy, it excited a far more serious attention in its performance, and a far deeper interest in its production, than can possibly arise in a land where the religion neither admits nor requires such assistance. Its effects were more deeply improved, and were more extensively diffused amongst the masses, as well by reason of their religious character, as 'that the theatre was almost the only place in which the people could obtain an audience of the intellectually great. A natural consequence was, that the government felt called upon not only to contribute large sums to the support of the theatre, but to interfere very frequently (and often inju diciously) in its actual management. Thus the price of admission at Athens was for a long time one drachma, a silver coin weighing about nine grains; but by the influence of Pericles, a decree was passed reducing the fee to a third, namely, two oboli ; which sum, if beyond the means of any citizen, he could obtain from the magistrates. The perpetuity of this law was secured by an enactment which imposed the penalty of death upon those who unsuccessfully attempted to repeal it. The public treasures were thus foolishly squandered; and even the eloquence of Demosthenes was unable to convince the Athenians of the sin of this law. The legislature also took upon itself to regulate the number of the chorus in each drama. The services of a chorus were so frequently required in the solemnities at Athens, that each tribe was compelled to tribes, was maintained by the state. His duties were to provide a choregus-an officer who, amongst the poorer supply a band of vocal and instrumental performers, to provide them with embroidered clothing for festivals, and to appoint a chorus master. Upon holidays, he appeared at the head of his band wearing a gilt crown and rich robe. The watchful eye with which everything appertaining to the stage was regarded, may be gathered from an incident mentioned by Herodotus. The capture of Miletus by the Persians, an affair dishonourable alike to the arms and councils of Athens, was made the subject of a tragedy by Phrynichus; and such was the power with which it was treated, that the audience were moved to tears. The poet was mulcted in a thousand drachmæ for dramatising this calamitous occurrence, and the repetition of the piece was forbidden. Another anecdote, related on good authority, shows the fascination which theatrical amusements exercised over the Athenian mind. During the representation of a tragi-comedy, written by Hegemon near the close of the Peloponnesian war, the news of the total defeat of their fleet and army before Syracuse was communicated to the spectators. Almost every person in the house had lost a relation, and the performance was stopped by a burst of grief which the disastrous intelligence inevitably called forth. Nevertheless, as soon as the first paroxysm of sorrow was quelled, the audience reseated themselves, and covering their faces with their mantles, the play was ordered to proceed to its conclusion. The theatres of the Greeks were not intended, as ours are, for performances during several consecutive months, but were open only for a short time at the seasons appointed for religious festivals, when the capitals were crowded with a population gathered from a wide circuit. The word 'theatre' is associated in our minds with night, and gas-light, and heated houses; but the acting of a play in Greece took place under very different circumstances. The performance was invariably by day, and their theatres had no roof, so that the spectators sat beneath the open sky. It was thought improper for women to appear on the stage, and female characters were therefore personated by men, as they were in England in the time of our early dramatists. A great concourse of people was the natural consequence of the particular period, and of the shortness of the time during which the theatres were open, and thus it was necessary to build them on a vast scale. Some were large enough to hold fifteen or sixteen thousand people. In this fact we may discover some justification for certain peculiarities of costume that would not be tolerated amongst ourselves, because they would remove one source of pleasure with which theatrical amusements are witnessed. The actors were raised above the ordinary height 'Your smiles are winds, whose ways we cannot trace, This is merely one example; but even the reader who never entered a theatre may conceive that the occasions are innumerable in which an actor, by his countenance, can add a most expressive commentary to his words, and at another time can hint a thousand words when he does not utter one. Yet all this kind of acting, and the pleasure derived from its successful accomplishment, the Greeks deliberately denied themselves by the use of masks. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that they were contrived with a view to increase the power of the voice, and that they were embellished to a high degree by the united efforts of the first sculptors and painters. A Greek theatre was of a semicircular or horse-shoe shape. Tiers of seats for the audience were placed round that part of the interior which was curved, whilst the stage was formed by a platform in front. Magistrates and persons of quality were placed on the lower tiers, the middle seats were appropriated to the common people; and if females attended the theatre, which has been doubted, they occupied the highest range. The seats were reached by staircases, which mounted from tier to tier at equal distances from each other. What the French call the parterre, and we the pit, was not given up to spectators, but was occupied by the chorus, whose duty it was to sing or recite the lyrical pieces which formed a large portion of every play. In the middle of this space, then termed the orchestra, there was an elevated altar, on which sacrifice was offered before the drama commenced, and steps surrounded it, upon which the performers making the chorus stood when they were engaged in dialogue by the mouth of their coryphaeus with the actors on the stage. This band of performers personated, just as the ends of the drama were best answered, aged men or venerable matrons, young men or priests. They were divided into two companies, who danced in time to the music whilst they recited the words assigned to them. When repeating the strophe they moved from right to left, then during the antistrophe from left to right; but when the epode was chanting, they looked full upon the audience. The style of the dance was of course regulated by the character of the music, and that again by the nature of the poetry which it accompanied. Great skill was frequently displayed by the dancers in adapting their gestures to the subject of the drama, and even to represent the course of the action. The name of one performer has been given whose movements were supposed to express very distinctly the events of the Seven Chiefs of Thebes, by Eschylus. The music introduced during the performance was probably not more than sufficient to guide the dances, and to assist the voices of the singers, without putting forward any claim to attention on its own account. The lyre, the flute, and the pipe, swelled with their blended sweetness, without overwhelming the vocal harmonies of the chorus; and although these simple instruments were manifestly incapable of producing the grand musical effects of modern orchestras, we may well believe that, acutely alive as the Grecians were in all matters of taste, they succeeded in forming an exquisite combination of voice and instrument. That part of the stage on which the actors stood when speaking was termed the logeum; it was narrow in proportion to its length, covered with awning, and moveable. Behind, a wall rose to the height of the loftiest tier of seats, and between this wall and the logeum were placed the proscenium and the decorations. A palace or temple was usually represented in the back-ground, and views of distant scenery were given at the sides. It seems probable that in some cases the open country was permitted to be seen. It is noticeable that situations of great beauty were selected for the theatres : thus the theatre of Taurominium, in Sicily, was so constructed that the audience had Mount Etna in prospect. The theatre at Athens commanded Mount Hymettus, the Saronic Gulf, and the three ports of Piræus. Immediately above it stood the Parthenon on its Acropolis. The beautiful situation,' says an intelligent writer, occupied by the remains of many of the ancient theatres, justifies the supposition that they were studiously placed so as to command and to incorporate with their own architectural features the finest objects of the adjacent country. The majestic moun tains and luxuriant plains, the groves and gardens, the land-locked and open sea, in the neighbourhood of many of the principal cities of Greece, presented the finest materials which taste could suggest or desire for such combinations. But the charm of southern landscape depends not solely on the romantic or beautiful features which enter into its composition. In that land of the sun, the purity of the atmosphere, the rich and magical lines of colour, the soft loveliness of the aerial perspective, the powerful relief of light and shadow, produce impressions of pleasure rarely equalled, even in our finest days, in these northern regions.' The machinery of the stage was very simple, and it was concealed from view as much as possible; for the Greeks were desirous that their representations should rely as little as need be upon stage artifices. There were various entrances for the performers. The chorus came in at a door in the orchestra, which it seldom quitted for the stage. There was also an entrance in the orchestra for characters who were supposed to come from a distance, and they attained the logeum by a staircase. On the logeum itself there was another entrance, and by this the inhabitants of the town found their way. Again, there were three points of ingress in the back wall of the scene; through the main one the great characters came before the audience, whilst the side ones served for subordinate persons. The scene was generally adorned with columns and statues in rich variety; and we are told that vases and hollow vessels were distributed here and in other parts of the theatre, for the purpose of aiding the diffusion of sound. We may now allude to the appearance of the actors on the stage. The Grecian eye, acquainted with formal grace in all its shapes, demanded not only that every action should be conducted with submission to their severe rules of taste, but that the arrangements of all persons on the stage should be governed by the same rules. The actors were taught to fall into exquisite groups, and to feast the eye with the beauty of symmetry and proportion, whilst the ear was delighted with the sound of the most musical of languages. Thus the theatre was a place which the artist and the poet might frequent with equal instruction. The narrowness of the stage would throw the figures into strong relief, its length would bestow a frieze-like appearance on the whole disposition, and the mechanical aids that were called in for the regulation of light would materially increase the statuesque effect. Eschylus derived part of his celebrity from his improving the costume of his characters. The deities he placed on the stage were clothed in imitation of the finest and most appropriate statues; and the drapery of all his performers was arranged with such elegance, that the priests were furnished with hints for a more finished style of dress in themselves. In the same way Romney the painter is said to have reformed the fantastic method of arranging the hair of ladies, prevalent at the close of the last century, by showing in some of his pictures the superior effect of a more natural manner. MISCELLANEA. The Scuir of Eigg is a magnificent pillar of basalt that rises in one of the Western Islands, above a stratum of oolite rock, containing fossil remains of a peculiar pine of that era, when the earth contained no animals superior to birds and reptiles. In the Witness (Edinburgh newspaper), there is at present in progress a series of chapters descriptive of a visit paid last summer to these islands by the editor, Mr Hugh Miller, whose speculations on the old red sandstone have made his name well known to geologists. The extraction of some specimens of the Pinites Eiggensis, as it is called, from the oolitic bed underneath the Scuir, forms the occasion of some curious remarks in the third chapter. After speaking of the oolite stratum as formed in the sea, and afterwards upheaved by volcanic agency with the mass of basalt over it, the writer thus proceeds: The annual rings of the wood, which are quite as small as in a slowgrowing Baltic pine, are distinctly visible in all the better pieces I this day transferred to my bag. In one fragment I reckon sixteen rings in half an inch, and fifteen in the same space in another. The trees to which they belonged seem to have grown on some exposed hill-side, where, in the course of half a century, little more than from two to three inches were added to their diameter. Viewed through the microscope in transparent slips, longitudinal and transverse, it presents, within the space of a few lines, objects fitted to fill the mind with wonder. We find the minutest cells, glands, fibres, of the original wood preserved uninjured; there still are those medullary rays entire that communicated between the pith and the outside; there still the ring of thickened cells that indicated the yearly check which the growth received when winter came on; there the polygonal reticulations of the cross section, without a single broken mesh; there, too, the elongated cells in the longitudinal one, each filled with minute glands that take the form of double circles; there, also, of larger size and less regular form, the lacunæ in which the turpentine lay; every nicely-organised speck, invisible to the naked eye, we find in as perfect a state of keeping in the incalculably ancient pile-work on which the gigantic Scuir is founded, as in the living pines that flourish green on our hill-sides. A net-work, compared with which that of the finest lace ever worn by the fair reader would seem a net-work of cable, has preserved entire, for untold ages, the most delicate peculiarities of its pattern. There is not a mesh broken, nor a circular dot away!' pre proportion in which I have seen the annual rings of a young vigorous fir that had sprung up in some rich moist hollow, differ from the annual rings of trees of the same species that had grown in the shallow hard soil of exposed hill-sides. And this one specimen furnishes curious evidence that the often-marked but little understood law, which gives us our number and uncertain in their time of recurrence, obtained better and worse seasons in alternate groups, various in as early as the age of the oolite. The rings follow each other in groups of lesser and larger breadth. One group of four rings measures an inch and a quarter across, while an adjoining group of five rings measures only five-eighth parts; and in a breadth of six inches there occur five of these alternate groups. For some four or five years together, when this pine was a living tree, the springs were late and cold, and the summers cloudy and chill, as in that group of seasons which intervened between 1835 and 1841; and then for four or five years more springs were early and suminers genial, as in the after group of 1842, 1843, and 1844. An arrangement in nature-first observed, as we learn from Bacon, by the people of the Low Countries, and which has since formed the basis of meteoric tables, and of predictions, and elaborate cycles of the weather-bound together the twelvemonths of the oolitic period in alternate bundles of better and worse: vegetation throve vigorously during the summers of one group, and languished in those of another in a state of partial development.' Captain Osborne, in his work entitled The Court and Camp of Rungeet Sing, gives an account of a Fakir who professed to have an extraordinary power of suspending animation in his body for a great length of time, during which he allowed himself to be kept in a burial vault, apart from all supply of air and food. The monotony of our camp life,' he says, 'was broken this morning by the arrival of a very celebrated character in the Punjaub, a person we had all expressed great anxiety to see, and whom the Maha-Rajah had ordered over from Umrutser on purpose. He is a fakir by name, and is held in extraor dinary respect by the Sikhs, from his alleged capacity of being able to bury himself alive for any period of time. So many stories were current on the subject, and so many respectable individuals maintained the truth of these stories, that we all felt curious to see him. He professes to have been following this trade, if so it may be called, for some years, and a considerable time ago several extracts from the letters of individuals who had seen the man in the Upper Provinces, appeared in the Calcutta papers, giving some account of his extraordinary powers, which were at the time, naturally enough, looked upon as mere attempts at a hoax upon the inhabitants of Calcutta. Captain Wade, political agent at Ludhiana, told me that he was present at his resurrection after an interment of some months; General Ventura having buried him in the presence of the Maha-Rajah and many of his principal sirdars; and, as far as I can recollect, these were the particulars as witnessed by General Ventura :-After going through a regular course of preparation, which occupied him seven days, and the details of which are too disgusting to dilate upon, the fakir reported himself ready for interment in a vault which had been prepared for the purpose by order of the Maha-Rajah. On the appearance of Runjeet and his court, he proceeded to the final preparations that were necessary in their presence, and after stopping with wax his ears and nostrils, he was stripped and placed in a linen bag; and the last preparation concluded by turning his tongue forwards, and thus closing the gullet, he immediately died away in a kind of lethargy. The bag was then closed, and sealed with Runjeet's seal, and afterwards placed in a small deal box, which was also locked and sealed. The box was then From facts plainly placed before our eyes, · we now know,' says Mr Miller, that the ancient Eigg pine, to which the detached fragment picked up at the base of the Scuir belonged-a pine alike different from those of the earlier carboniferous period and those which exist cotemporary with ourselves-was, some three creations ago, an exceedingly common tree in the country now called Scot-placed in a vault, the earth thrown in and trod down, and land; as much so, perhaps, as the Scotch fir is at the sent day. The fossil trees found in such abundance in the neighbourhood of Helmsdale, that they are burnt for lime -the fossil wood of Eathie, in Cromartyshire, and that of Shandwick, in Ross-all belong to the Pinites Eiggensis. It seems to have been a straight and stately tree, in most instances, as in the Eigg specimens, of slow growth. One of the trunks I saw near Navidale measured two feet in diameter, but a full century had passed ere it attained to a bulk so considerable; and a splendid specimen in my collection from the same locality, which measures twenty-one inches, exhibits even more than a hundred annual rings. In one of my specimens, and one only, the rings are of great breadth. They differ from those of all the others in the a crop of barley sown over the spot, and sentries placed round it. The Maha-Rajah was, however, very sceptical on the subject, and twice in the course of the ten months he remained under ground, sent people to dig him up, when he was found to be in exactly the same position, and in a state of perfectly suspended animation. At the termination of the ten montlis, Captain Wade accompanied the Maha-Rajah to see him disinterred, and states that he examined him personally and minutely, and was convinced that all animation was perfectly suspended. He saw the locks opened and the seals broken by the Maha-Raja, and the box brought into the open air. The man was then taken out, and on feeling his wrist and heart, not the slightest pulsation was perceptible. The first thing to |