rous disadvantages. That Flavia should not care for him, is only natural, but for being natural it is not the less bitter. Caroline is his only comforter, and save his mother and Selwyn, a sickly youth to whom he is deeply attached, almost his only friend. A few years clapse; Mr. Wilmington pursues his course of unlimited expense; we find him giving a yachting party, and so anxious to please his exalted guests, that he, the handsome, fashionable man, almost sinks into vulgarity. The old duchess, her lovely granddaughter, and handsome Lord George, are of course present. Henry is there too, shy and neglected as usual.

"His father left him to take care of the less distinguished members of the party-a subordinate place for which he deemed his ungraceful son exactly fitted; and so indeed he was, if the kindest attention to the comforts of every one, especially of the more obscure, could fit a man for such an office.'

a cast-off lover to the poor girl. It is the poor man's lamb to her. I am afraid we shall hate you if you do that. "Is there nothing here to divert her melancholy, but pictures of life and fresh air? Nothing-Harry nothing?" looking with meaning. "Take care of what you are about."

"Of what I am about," said he, with simplicity, not having the slightest idea of her meaning, so far were such thoughts from him. "What can you mean?Poor thing?"

"Ah, Mr. Wilmington! What is the cause of all this melancholy on her part, I wonder?"

"Dont you know?-how should you!-That poor woman, her mother, was wife to the captain of one of my father's ships. He was a plain, rough fellow, as such men mostly are; but a worthy man and an excellent commander of a vessel. The poor girl's betrothed sailed with him as mate. It was to be his last voyage, poor This very circumstance attracts Flavia's attention. lad! and then he was to come home and marry her. "She saw an elderly lady, dressed in a widow's dress, They were bound for Newfoundland. It's a long, dismal, and a very plain, delicate-looking girl, standing humbly but an heroic story. The ship struck upon a sunken on one side, whilst every one else was pressing forward rock; the boats were got out; all those on board saved, and getting themselves good places. Harry was standing but these two insisted upon being the last to quit there, helping people into the boat, and she watched the vessel. This good fellow and this brave boy. these two, pushed and shuffled aside by the bustling He was seconding his captain in his attempt to save throng. Then she saw him speak to one of the sailors, some provisions, and to rescue them all. They were, and jump over the side of the boat, leaving the man to with three more sailors, still upon the vessel, when she take his place, go up to this poorly dressed widow and gave way, went to pieces, and they all perished. The this plain, feeble-looking girl, exchange some kind poor man had a large venture on board,-the poor lad greetings, very cordial indeed they appeared to her, and his all engaged on that venture. They left these two then, offering an arm to cach, attend them to the water's women beggars and friendless, for they had not a relaedge. He then helped them in, placed them in a con- tion in the world. The widow bore up and will fight venient place to do which he was forced to derange it out; the girl will go at last. She is a commonplace, some very gaily dressed young men, who looked con- good-hearted woman, just a proper wife for her rough, temptuously at the intruders-then he wrapped the honest husband; but the two young ones were different; young lady in his own boat-cloak, and giving the signal, I don't know how it was, but there was a delicacy and the boats started, and he placed himself by her side." sensibility about her, that one would wonder how she came by; and he was a fine, noble-hearted fellow-poor lad!" | Flavia's glistening eyes were bent upon Harry's face, as with an expression and tone of the deepest feeling he told this little story. He was not, and could not be in the least aware of the interest these moments of deep feeling gave to his countenance. She gazed-was silent dropped her eyes, mused, and stood there thoughtfully."

Flavia feels interested, and as Lord George very unluckily takes this moment to flirt with handsome Miss Emerson, for the meritorious purpose of quizzing a vain girl and rendering his pretty cousin jealous, she obtains an opportunity of conversing freely with Henry Wilmington.

"She looked round. Harry was at a little distance, about to offer his arm, as it would seem, to the poor widow; but he glanced that way, saw Miss L., standing there alone, turned to Selwyn, who stood by, begged him to take care of Mrs. Freeman, and was at her side, and with his arm offered in a moment. He changed colour several times as she took it, and stammered and looked very shy, but oh, so happy! It was really beautiful to see what expression could do for that countenance. They went down together, she talking to him; but in a low subdued voice, and not with her usual gaiety." "****“And I wanted to ask you who was that you took such especial care of, Mr. Henry Wilmington, as the company were getting into the boats?" "Who? I don't remember."

"Don't you? but I watched all your proceedings, and I remember quite well. A very pale girl, looking too sickly for these sort of affairs: I wonder what she came for. She cannot enjoy such scenes-impossibleexcept, indeed-"

"Oh! I know who you mean now-Mrs. Freeman and her daughter-Poor thing! enjoy them! No, I am afraid she cannot; but she comes to please her mother, I believe. It is her mother's idea that her deep melancholy may be in some little degree dissipated by such pictures of life-for those things are but as pictures to her-and that the fine air and sailing upon such a day, may do good. I doubt it myself."

Flavia asks to speak to the widow and her daughter. Left alone with them she hears "how it was Harry who had urged her claims for assistance upon his father; how Mr. Wilmington, who was good-natured, but thoughtless, was apt to forget things of this nature, regarding others as well as herself; how Harry never forgot them. How much good in secret he did; how moderate were his own expenses; how simple his habits; how generous his deeds, how high his reputation stood for wise and scrupulous honour in business; how highly his abilities were rated by those who knew him well; how kind he had been to her, in so many ways, besides the great essential service he had rendered her by obtaining this pension." Flavia compared this character to that of the vain Lord George, and a change came over her heart.

Mrs. Wilmington dies. Alarmed at her husband's increasing extravagance, she has made it her dying request that Henry shall devote himself to his father's interests; he does so unthanked, for what is to him a most painful sacrifice of all his tastes and feelings, but supported by his sense of duty. After a three years widowhood, Mr. Wilmington marries the vain, empty Miss Emerson. The new bride does not lessen the extravagant merchant's expenditure or reckless speculation. Henry remonstrates in vain. Mr. Wilmington involves even his rich old Indian friend, Mr. Craiglethorpe, in his dangerous folly. Henry is in despair; this probable My pretty Flavia do not be so mean. Do not grudge loss of another man's money where there are no means

"And is there nothing else here?" said Flavia, a little sarcastically.

of repaying it, this culpable abuse of a most generous confidence stings him to the heart. Filled with mournful forebodings, he retires from the gay scene of his father's ball-room to some lonely spot more suited to his present mood. Flavia, sent by a mutual friend, goes to seek him.

"She glided away, slid through the gay crowds that thronged the door of the drawing-room, entered another, gaily lighted, but almost deserted, passed through another emptier still, and entered the boudoir, faintly illuminated from the other rooms; for the lights, by some negligence, had here been suffered to burn so dimly, that it was as twilight, after the brilliancy of the others. He was on a low settee, his hands covering his face, she stepped softly up to him. "My dear Henry, what is the

matter?"

He lifted up his head. His expression was miserable. "Flavia! what are you come here for? " "We have missed you, Henry, Selwyn He asked me to come and look for you. the matter, he is sure."

sweetest

misses you. Something is

"My Flavia!" lifting up eyes of such melancholy tenderness, that her very heart was melted. " My Flavia, there is much to make me feel anxious and perplexed; but one word from you. Fool that I am . . . . .. My forgive me, Flavia; I heard some bad news, to night." Flavia vainly seeks to console; his heart is filled with a double sorrow: shame for his father's approaching disgrace, and passionate regret for what he deems his own unreturned love. "Even at this very moment," he exclaims, "when the situation of his affairs demands my undivided energy, my very heart is dying within me for griefs altogether my own. I am a poor creature, as he called me."

"Henry, Henry! said she, as sitting down by him, and trying to uncover his face, she gently pulled his hands away. There was the artless innocence of an affectionate little child in all her proceedings. "Look up, dear Henry; don't be so miserable;-look up. Cannot I do something? I believe I am to have a great deal of this tiresome money some time: it is all at your service, dear Henry, if that will do any good."

He could not bear this; he pushed away her hands. "Help me! No, no; nothing you can do."

I

She was hurt at this, and the tears came into her cyes. "This is very unkind. You are like the rest. thought you would never be unkind to me."

"Was I unkind! Oh, Flavia!"

“Everybody vexes me; but I thought you and Caroline would never be unkind-I thought was safe from trouble with you."

enormous sum to come from? All he possesses will scarcely yield as much. Henry insists on retrenchment and economy, and the father yields a tardy assent. This, though long expected, has been no light blow to the noble young man. True to his honourable nature, he relinquishes Flavia; and though she refuses to break their engagement, the prospect of entire poverty, especially under such disgraceful circumstances, is insupportable to his love and nice sense of honour. To add to his affliction, his friend Selwyn is dying, and he cannot let him know the full extent of his misery, for Selwyn is nephew of Mr. Craiglethorpe, to whom his great property naturally reverts. The scrupulous Henry would scorn to avail himself of his friend's generosity, even to save his family from ruin, and that especially at the expense of a Iman who has already suffered so severely from that family. The gay Wilmingtons are now much reduced. They have left their splendid mansion in Belgrave Square for a comparatively humble home. It is a wintry morning in March; handsome Mrs. Wilmington, whose temper is not improved by her fallen fortunes, scolds fretfully as she pours out the tea; her husband, scarcely less peevish, finds however an ill-natured pleasure in tormenting his wife by reading the paper instead of coming to breakfast.

"The fire blazed, Mrs. Wilmington pouted; Mr. Wilmington turned the paper idly about. Suddenly his eye caught something-a paragraph. He stooped down, reading it as if he would devour it; he bent it to the fire as if he would see it by that light; then he gathered the paper up and crushed it into his pocket, and starting up made as if he would run out of the room; he then sat down again and panted as if for breath; then he pulled out the paper again-again bent down to the fire, and read or rather devoured the passage.

"What in the world is the matter now?" said Lizzy, who had been watching him.

At this his two children looked up. He was pale with emotion; but it was not the emotion of grief-every feature was working with agitation. Again he crumpled the paper into his pocket, and looked quite bewildered, almost as if he was beside himself-it certainly was not sorrow-it hardly seemed joy—what was it ?

'My dear father!" said Caroline.

"For goodness sake, Mr. Wilmington, what can be the reason of these unaccountable ways; are you going crazy?" exclaimed his wife.

"My dear Sir, what is the matter?" asked Henry, coming up to him anxiously, as soon as he was aware of the state he was in; "what can have happened?" "Harry-Harry-my boy-my boy-read it yourself,

"Trouble! But you will soon have a protector who read it yourself," was all he could articulate, taking the

adores you."

"I! who?"

"Lord George."

"Lord George! Never, never! He protect me! he torments and distresses me, till I don't know what to do. And you, Henry, my only friend, you are like the rest,- -so unkind to me!"

"Unkind to thee, my Flavia! Oh, that I might open these arms to shelter thee for ever."

He opened them, and she sank upon his breast. She did not think-she did not know-it was one sweet impulse with them both. Not one word was spoken; one close embrace, heart to heart, and it was as if they had been betrothed for years."

Henry's intoxicating dreams of happiness are soon disturbed. His father's speculation proves as unfortunate as the clear-sighted young man had anticipated: Mr. Craiglethorpe's hundred thousand pounds are lost immediately; even the confident merchant is staggered ; for his friend and benefactor is on his way home, and he feels that the money must be returned: but where is the

newspaper out of his pocket again, and putting it into his hand. Henry unfolded the paper and searched about, but saw nothing.

"I find nothing, Sir-where is it?-what is it?" he said-"Give it me;" he was panting violently, his hand shook as he took the paper again-he found the paragraph with difficulty, and his shaking fingers pointed it out to his son.'

The intelligence is, that the ship in which Mr. Craiglethorpe was returning with his immense fortune, has been wrecked on the coast of Madagascar. Mr. Craiglethorpe is numbered with the dead.

Good God!" was all that Harry could say. He was the more shocked from the horrid feeling of relief which the disastrous intelligence forced even upon him, and which was but too visible upon his father's agitated countenance. Yes, it was joy, terrible joy, joy inexpressible, which his son could not help reading there."

Scarcely has the news arrived when Selwyn expires; Henry is not with him then, and believes he died in ignorance of his uncle's fate: his will proves the contrary.

By a codicil added to that will, in the last moments of existence, Henry and his father are, on account of Mr. Craiglethorpe's death, declared sole heirs to the young man's property.

I saw, in the environs of Shang-hai, cotton-trees with yellow down growing in close neighbourhood with white cotton-trees, the latter, however, being much the most numerous. There were some, also, producing a down of an intermediate shade, but it appears that the yellow cotton prevails most on the banks of the Yang-tse-kiang, in the environs of Nankin, and on the borders of the great Canal. Its colour is attributed by many to the oxide of iron contained in the soil where it grows, and this would explain its being subject, when transplanted, to degenerate and produce white cotton.

textures was natural to the raw material, and not subject to fade. Sir George Staunton, one of Lord Macartney's embassy, found, in going through the province of Kiangnân, that the cotton it produces is naturally of the yellow A lull takes place in the agitated fortunes of the Wil-colour, which it retains after spinning and weaving. He mingtons. Henry marries Flavia, retires with her and also says, that when the Nankin cotton is transplanted his sister Caroline to a pleasant home in Wales, and there to another province it degenerates and becomes white. three years of pure happiness pass away. But lo! on a lovely summer evening a dry, sun-burned old man alights at the gate of the elder Mr. Wilmington's splendid seat, and imperatively asks to see the master. It is old Mr. Craiglethorpe, escaped from the shipwreck and come back to see the friend of his youth. Received by Mrs. Wilmington as an impostor, he has hope from her husband; but by him too he is repulsed and denied; when he proves his identity, and asserts his claim to the hundred thousand pounds, Mr. Wilmington returns him the valueless shares of the mining company in which the sum was invested. A deep insatiable desire for vengeance enters the heart of the wronged and ruined old man. A chance-meeting with the servant of his late nephew convinces him that Selwyn died in ignorance of his supposed death; that the codicil to the will must consequently have been forged. And on whom does his suspicion and his vengeance fall? On Henry; Henry who was the last stranger seen in Selwyn's dwelling. His father came indeed to the house, and remained after he had left his dying friend, but no one knows this save Henry himself and an old servant down in the country. We need scarcely say that Mr. Wilmington is the forger. The unhappy young man is arrested, tried and condemned for his father's crime. This we cannot help considering the weak point of the book. The trial of the innocent hero is a worn out incident of little interest, the reader being aware that no author or authoress could possibly have the heart to hang so exemplary an individual. We confess that the certainty of his ultimate safety considerably diminished our concern in poor Henry Wilmington's sufferings, and in those of his gentle Flavia.

dishonour.

The story of the Wilmingtons is written with the refinement and elegance which characterize the authoress; it is interspersed with many beautiful passages of quiet thought and delicate feeling; a pure spirit of devotion, charity, and self-sacrifice sanctifies the whole.

NANKEEN.

Ilocos, one of the provinces of the Philippine Isles, has likewise a reddish cotton, named coyote, a still deeper colour than that of Kiang-nân; and the plant, like that of China, deteriorates when expatriated, and produces a white down, but, on being restored to its native soil, is again covered with red cotton.

From every opportunity of comparing, on the spot, the colour of the calico of Nankin and of Ilocos with that of the raw material, we were compelled to draw the same conclusion that it was natural, and to admit, as a certain and indubitable fact, the pre-existence of this shade in the thread employed by the weaver.

The cottons of Hayti, of Caraccas, of many parts of India, and especially of Purneah and Orissa, as also the cottons of Egypt, present a hue which closely resembles that of the Nankin cottons, and which would probably remain in the unbleached manufactured article.

SCIENCE THE WONDER-WORKER.

Is a

The general faith in science as a wonder-worker is at present unlimited; and along with this there is cherished The end is briefly told. The innocence of Henry is the conviction that every discovery and invention admits proved by the confession of his father, who dies of of a practical application to the welfare of men. mingled remorse and terror, as well as by the testimony new vegetable product brought to this country from of the old servant; he is dismissed to his Welsh home abroad, or a new chemical compound discovered, or a not to enjoy happiness-such sorrows leave deep traces-novel physical phenomenon recorded? The question is but in freedom, and saved at least from death and immediately asked cui bono? What is it good for? Is food or drink to be got out of it? Will it make hats or shoes, or cover umbrellas? Will it kill or heal? Will it drive a steam-engine, or make a mill go? And truly this cui bono question has of late been so often satisfactorily answered, that we cannot wonder that the public should persist in putting it, somewhat eagerly, to every disIcoverer and inventor, and should believe that if a substance has one valuable application, it will prove, if further investigated, to have a thousand. Gutta percha has not been known in this country ten years, and already it would be more difficult to say what purposes it has not been applied to, than to enumerate those to which it has been applied. Gun-cotton had scarcely proved in the Or all the cotton produced in China, the most remark- saddest way its power to kill, before certain ingenious able, as well as the most beautiful, is that used in the Americans showed that it has a remarkable power of healfabrication of the calico known in Europe under the name ing, and forms the best sticking-plaster for wounds. of nankin or nankeen. It has been long a matter of Surgeons have not employed ether and chloroform as debate whether the texture called nankeen was manufac-anaesthetics for three years; and already an ether steamtured from a raw material, having, previous to any mani- engine is at work in Lyons, and a chloroform engine in pulation, the yellowish hue which distinguishes it, or London. Polarization of light, as a branch of science, whether it owed its peculiar shade to a light dye. is the enigma of enigmas to the public. What it is, is a M. Van Braam, who was at the head of the commer- small matter; but what work it can perform is a great cial mission sent out by Holland to Pekin in 1794, had been instructed by the European merchants to request that the nankeens destined for their different markets might for the future be dyed a deeper colour than they had been for some time past; and he had an opportunity, during his stay, of ascertaining that the colour of these

(From a Report lately submitted by M. Haussman, Attaché to the French Embassy in China, to the Industrial Association of Mul

hausen.)

one. It must turn to some use. The singularly ingenious Wheatstone, accordingly, has already partly satisfied the public by making polarized light act as a time-keeper, and has supplied us with a sky-polariscope; a substitute for a sun-dial, but greatly superior to it in usefulness and accuracy. Of other sciences we need