that was strong enough for them,' he continued, pointing to a balloon; but, lor bless you, they don't care now for balloons. Go and think it over. For my part, I thought of proposing a trapeze at the top of the two highest scaffold poles we can get.'

I started a bit as he said that; and just then the balloon rose and went away swiftly and lightly over the trees, while I watched it thoughtfully, for I had got an idea in my head.

The next morning I talked it over with Tom, who agreed to it in a minute; and we shook hands over it slowly, for our minds were made up.

When the manager engaged us first, he said our name wouldn't do a bit. The Tantipalpitis' name, he said, was by rights Bodge. The consequence was (as I have said), we went in for French; so the announcement of the Grand Trapeze Act' of 'Les Frères Provençaux' was advertised all over London. How well I remember that bright June day, when, going forward in our grand dresses, all tights, satin, ruff, and spangles, we were greeted with a roar of applause, and saw that the Gardens were crammed with people, in the middle of whom was the great balloon ready filled, and swinging about as it tugged at its ropes.

'How do you feel, Tom?' I said, looking at him.

'Brave as a lion, my boy,' he says stoutly. 'It's no more than doing it twenty feet high.'

'True,' I said; and it is as easy to be drowned in sixty as in six hundred feet of water.'

The next minute we were holding the trapeze bars, close to the balloon, waiting the signal for it to rise; and now, for the first time, I felt a sensation of fear, and I'll tell you what gave it to me— the people, instead of cheering us as soon as we began to rise, kept perfectly silent, and that seemed to go right through me; for you must know that what we had been advertised to do was to perform our rope and bar tricks right under the balloon, twenty feet below the car, and that without anything to save us if we should make a slip.

There was no time for fear, though; and the next minute we were doing it all as coolly as could be, as we rose fifty, a hundred, a thousand feet in the air, and floated away out of sight.

I don't recall that I was so very glad to get up into the car, for the excitement kept me from feeling afraid I remember thinking, though, that Tom looked rather pale. Then we wrapped up well, and enjoyed our first hour's ride till we came down right away in Kent.

a great deal of my timidity, as I told myself that a man might play such antics for his whole life and never fall. Well, as I said, we had been doing it about a month, when one evening we took our places as usual. It was an extra night, and the largest balloon was to ascend; our rope, too, was to be lengthened to thirty feet, and at that distance below the car we were to swing about as usual.

You may say we ought to have been used to it by this time; there are things, though, which you never do get used to, try how you will, and this was one of them.

The bands were playing away their best; the people were eagerly looking at the half-a-dozen aeronauts who were to ascend; the manager of the balloon was there; the signal was given, and the people got in. Then the balloon was allowed to rise so high that our trapeze swung clear, when I hung from it by my legs, holding a crossbar in my hands, over which Tom threw his legs, and hung head downwards; and then away we went up, up through the soft evening air, so slowly that Tom's hands touched the top of one of the elm-trees as he waved about a couple of flags.

Our custom was to hang quite still till we were up four or five hundred feet, and then to begin our twining and twisting, and so we did now, when Tom pitched away the flags, and we went through our tricks rising higher and higher, with the faces of the dense crowd getting mixed into a confused mass, and the strains of the band growing fainter and fainter, till all below was quite mingled in a faint hum.

We had only one more trick to do, and that was to cast loose the bar, and each man swing by his own rope. I had loosened my end, the perspiration streaming down me the while, and Tom had done the same, when, swinging round towards me with a horrible white face, he exclaimed: Ben, old man, I'm going to fall.'

It's no use; I couldn't tell you what I felt then, if I had tried ever so, only that in half a second, I saw Tom lying a horrible crushed corpse far below; and I felt so paralysed that I thought I should have let go of my own rope and fallen myself. I could act, though, and I did, for in a flash I had given myself a jerk forward, and thrown myself against Tom, flinging my legs round him and holding him tightly; and then, tired as I was, I felt that I had double weight to sustain, for Tom's rope was swinging to and fro, and as my legs clung round his body, his head hung down, and I knew he must have fainted.

How I managed to hold on, I can't tell now, for though weak with all I had done, I managed to give a hoarse cry for help, and the next moment heard a cry of horror from the basket-work car. Then I felt the rope begin to jerk as they began haul us up, and I managed to shriek out: 'No! no!' for if they had hauled any longer, they must have jerked poor Tom from my hold.

to

I often ask myself whether it was half an hour or only a few seconds before I saw a rope lowered with a big running noose, and then I've a misty notion of having set my teeth fast on the rope, as I felt a dreadful weight, as of lead, dragging at me. Then I felt that it was all over, and I knew that I had been the death of poor Tom, for he had seemed to fall, as I felt the rope by which I hung jerk again violently.. I saw the earth below like

some places it does not exceed seven hundred yards in width, and its rocky walls rise to the height of twelve hundred yards.

The islands of Spitzbergen, Faröe, and Shetland present the spectacle of innumerable fiords similar to those of Scandinavia. The shores of Scotland also, on the western side only, are deeply cut out; where the islands produce in miniature the labyrinth of promontories and bays of the neighbouring continent. That part of Ireland which lies towards the Atlantic develops itself into a series of rocky peninsulas, separated by narrow gulfs; whilst at the south and east, the coasts of Great Britain are much less marked in form, and, for the most part, display the regular curves before spoken of. In France there is scarcely a trace of these deep cuttings, excepting at the extremity of the coast of Brittany; on the other hand, Iceland, Labrador, and Western Greenland, the islands of the Polar Archipelago, the American shore of the Pacific, from the long peninsula of Alaska to the labyrinth of Vancouver's Island, are not less rich in the form which we call fiords. They do not recommence until the long uniform coast of Chili has been passed, then come the island of Chiloe with its numerous bays, and the network of straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego. The southern hemisphere is the only region of the globe where may be seen the extraordinary phenomenon of winding and deep valleys filled with sea-water.

This examination of the shores of different countries leads us to a confirmation of the fact, that fiords are only met with in cold countries, and much more numerously on the side turned towards the west than the east. Why is this strange geographical contrast produced according to the position which they occupy? And why have the coasts enjoying a warm or temperate climate been moulded into the gentle undulating form which we so commonly see? whilst the plateaux of Scandinavia and other lands have preserved their primitive form. One part of the solution of this question, operating in the same way at the extremities of the two continents in the icy regions of Magellanic islands and the north of Europe, may be found in the great geological change which has passed over the world during past ages of our planet. This is none other than the extreme cold which was formerly felt on the surface of the globe, and transformed the summits of the mountains into streams of ice. It thus becomes clear how the fiords, these ancient clefts in the shore, have been maintained in their primitive state by the prolonged continuance of the glaciers. The period of cold, unequivocal testimonies of which are still seen even in the tropics, under the equator, at the foot of the Andes, and in the valley of the Amazon, has naturally lasted much longer in the neighbourhood of the poles than under the torrid or even the temperate regions. This glacial period, which probably terminated millions of ages ago on the burning shores of Brazil and Columbia, has ceased in France and England at a relatively recent time.

Let us glance at the effects of this in England, and realise some of the wonderful changes thus brought about. From the north of Scotland to the latitude of London, our whole country is covered with the strata which has been brought by the glaciers, and which geologists term drift; the southern counties from Cornwall to Kent are

the only ones unwrapped by this enveloping crust, all the materials of which are foreign to the soil where they rest. This phenomenon is much complicated, owing to the subsidence of the land, as geologists are of opinion that we then belonged to one great continent with France and Germany, and were only separated from Norway by a narrow channel. At this epoch, continental vegetation invaded for the first time the greater part of our islands. Forests like those of Germany covered our coasts. The lignite or forest-bed of Cromer, traceable along the whole coast of Norfolk, shews the remains of this primitive vegetation. At a low tide, and after violent storms, the trunks of trees may still be seen standing with their roots plunged into the ancient soil. Among these trees, some specimens of the pine are only indigenous to Scotland; another, the fir-tree, is a complete stranger to England. The remains of aquatic plants prove these forests to have been marshy; the white and yellow water-lilies have been abundant. The bones of animals resemble those of Switzerland at the same period: the mammoth, two kinds of elephants, a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, a large kind of stag, the common wolf, the wild boar, and the beaver.

Continuing the examination of the shore where these layers of lignite form the base, there have been collected the remains of large marine animals, such as the morse or sea-horse, the narwhal, the backbone of the larger kinds of whale, and the shells of molluscs, both marine and fresh water. Above these is a bank of clay, commonly called boulder clay, as it is full of sharp pebbles, often rubbed or striped, and accompanied by erratic blocks of syenite, granite, and porphyry, coming from the mountains of Norway, evidently the deposit of a glacier. These cliffs of Norfolk are full of valuable teaching; they shew us that at a certain epoch the soil of England was raised at least two hundred yards, and made a part of the European continent. To this succeeded a period of subsidence; the portions of land which had emerged from the sea, sank slowly and insensibly, and at the end of ages which the imagination dare not compute, England, Scotland, and Ireland again became islands. It was during this time that the boulder-clay strata spoken of above were formed; and from the position in the hills where sea-water shells are found, the subsidence must have been about five hundred yards. The mountains of Scotland, Wales, Cumberland, and Ireland were the only portions above water; and the British Isles were reduced to an archipelago composed of four large islands and a number of small ones. Legions of floating masses detached from the glaciers of Greenland and Norway floated on to our coasts, and brought the débris and blocks fallen from the northern mountains. The icy sea nourished the shells of those regions; the flora had completely disappeared, except those vegetables which could bear the cold, and with a few animals lived on the high ground still above water.

After this first epoch of cold, the land rose once more, the islands were reunited to each other, and vegetation was again active on the emerged portions. The researches near Blair-Drummond, by Mr Jamieson, shew a regular succession of strata, which it would not be interesting to the general reader to specify, but which clearly prove that the land was very much above its ordinary level, and was a second time united to the continent. The

land being higher, it was consequently colder; the glaciers descended from the mountains, and filled the valleys that the sea had vacated: this was the second period, of terrestrial glaciers, in opposition to that of the floating icebergs, which have been already described. Geologists have found traces in the valleys of Scotland of polished and striated rocks, and striped stones, the certain signs of ancient glaciers. Around Edinburgh, on the Pentland Hills and Arthur's Seat, are the traces of one which descended into the Firth of Forth. The moraines are few, and not very marked, but the erratic blocks have evidently come from great distances.

Another curious trace of the passage of these glaciers over our islands may be found, it having for a long period excited the imagination of the people, and the astonishment of the wise. In Western Scotland, not far from Ben Nevis, and near the Caledonian Canal, is Glenroy; through its whole length there are three terraces perfectly horizontal, and corresponding on each side of the valley. In the eyes of the mountaineers, they were the roads traced by Fingal and his followers, the more easily to hunt the stag. The researches of geologists have established the fact, that they were the ancient shores of dried-up lakes; but they were at a loss how to explain the existence of these successive levels. The total absence of shells, the presence of small well-defined deltas, excluded the idea of their having been the sea-shore, formed during the subsidence of Scotland, and afterwards emerged from the ocean. Buckland and Agassiz agreed that there was but one solution-that glaciers had successively closed one or the other end of the valley, and the streams flowing from them had formed the terrace. Agassiz recognised the marked stones and ancient moraines which he had studied so thoroughly in the Alps; and since then, Mr Jamieson has completely confirmed his views. The formation of these parallel roads may be referred to the close of the second glacial period, and are due to the oscillation of glaciers descending from Ben Nevis and the surrounding mountains. The waters arrested in their passage formed lakes of different levels, each determined by the height of the hill which closed the extremity of the valley opposite to that barred by the glacier.

Returning now to a period nearer to historic times, we can trace in the fiords of Norway what has passed long ago in our own islands. There are still countries in the antarctic regions where the streams of ice descend into the sea and spread over the gulfs. The glacier of the Bay of Madeline projects far into the fiord, and the terminal cliff of ice, pushed forwards by the weight of the higher snows, shews a curved line turning its convexity towards the open sea. On the colder shores of Greenland, the bays are even filled with ice, and form a regular profile along the coast; the waves beat against these crystal walls, but the icy deposits disguise the real form of the architecture of these continents; and when, in a future age of geology, the ice has disappeared, the deep cuttings will in their turn become fiords. At the time when the Norwegian bays were filled in this way with ice, large blocks of stone, and masses of pebbles and earth, carried away during the thaw from the sides of the mountains, formed moraines such as are now seen at the foot of every glacier. They floated to the open sea at the

mouth of the fiord, and settled down in the midst of the waves with detached masses of ice. The successive deposits by degrees raised them so that they are found in all Scandinavian fiords, rising like a rampart out of the deep water. The Norwegian sailors give the name of 'sea-bridges' to these bars of nature, which shew the limit of the ancient glaciers, and form a meeting-place for the fish of the neighbouring seas to assemble in great numbers. On the western coast of Scotland, and in the smaller bays of Finisterre, chains of submarine banks and reefs may be found, which are probably the remains of old glacial moraines.

After the period of cold which existed in our globe, the Scandinavian glaciers drew back by degrees into the interior of the fiords, then ceased to touch the level of the sea, and rose higher and higher into the open valleys on the side of the mountains. The immense geological work of the filling up of the bays began for the torrents and the sea; the fresh-water streams brought their alluvium, and left it on the strand at the foot of the hills, whilst the sea spread the sand and mud thrown up by its waves. In many fiords, this transformation into land has made sensible progress; and if the rate of increase of the continent were known, it would be possible to calculate the epoch when the valleys would be freed from ice. On the eastern side, a similar work is going on; there the glaciers have been replaced by lakes, which are lessening as the streams and waterfalls pour their débris into them. The same process may be seen in the chain of the Swiss Alps; many deep depressions which were formerly the beds of large glaciers, have become a kind of continental fiord, such as the Lago Maggiore, Lugano, Como, and Garda. The lacustrine basins are closed towards the south by large moraines like the sea-bridges of Norway, and their waters will in time be filled up by the alluvium of Alpine streams.

The Scotch bays were no doubt freed from ice long before those to the north, owing to the warm stream which flows from the Antilles; still earlier have the shores of Ireland and Brittany ceased to serve as beds for solid snow. The eastern side of the English coast was first disembarrassed, owing to the fact, that the west and south winds blowing from the Atlantic were laden with the humidity necessary for the formation of the glaciers. Thus, in South America, the rains being much more abundant on the western side of Patagonia, the glaciers have descended lower into the valleys, and the fiords maintained by the ice in their primitive state make a perfect labyrinth of the shore. It is by the atmosphere that the form of the continents has to be explained. After the glaciers have disappeared, the levelling of the coast goes on with more or less rapidity, according to the form of the continent, the depth of the fiords, and various geographical phenomena. In some countries where the rivers are of small importance, such as Denmark and Mecklenburg, the fiords become long narrow lagoons, separated from the sea by sandy plains.

Whatever may be the diversity of means employed by nature to fill up former bays, it is certain that in the equatorial regions the curves of the shore have an ever-increasing regularity. Instead of the innumerable ports which offer a safe shelter in our latitudes, the sea-board of the south becomes more and more inhospitable for the want of indentations where a ship can take refuge, and there are

hundreds of leagues in the torrid zone without such a shelter. South America, Africa, and Australia possess the greatest uniformity of coast-line and the fewest bays.

A GOLDEN SORROW.

CHAPTER IX.-A WAY OF ESCAPE.

'PLENTY of money, and all England to choose from; Miriam had thus briefly and correctly defined Mr St Quentin's position. It was not an unenviable one, though she was almost as accurate in her guess at his age. He was not far from sixty years old, but he was very well preserved, and had been a handsome man in his youth, of an order of handsome manhood of which the form lasts, and even improves. He had been originally endowed with a fine constitution, and it had fulfilled its promise; successfully defied the climate of India, the labours and vexations of a commercial career, which had, however, been rewarded with success and fortune, the luxurious life in which that fortune had enabled him to indulge, and such domestic afflictions as had befallen him. The latter had not been numerous, and Mr St Quentin never alluded to them. Those who knew him best knew no more than that he had married in England, and that his wife had died in India. He had no near relatives; he never spoke of having any distant ones; and he had always been a man of few intimacies.

Mr St Quentin, in returning to Europe, did not make so grave a mistake as many men make, in abandoning the mode of life to which years have habituated them, to take a place in a social system with which they have no longer anything in common. He had no plan in his mind for the revival of old associations, but he had a very well-constructed scheme for the formation of a pleasant mode of life for himself, which should be entirely new. The sort of thing he asked of Europe, Europe could undoubtedly give him; the gratification of his material inclinations, and of late-grown taste for travel in the Western World. Mr St Quentin was only moderately anxious about the fulfilment of his ostensible purpose in visiting Hampshire. He would buy a place' in that county if he should find one to suit him; but he would not be in a hurry about it, and the looking for such a thing would afford him an opportunity of making the pleasant surface sort of acquaintances of which he had few at present. He had been fortunate in the companions of his homeward voyage; his fellowtravellers had got on well with him, and he had been popular. A man coming home from India, at his time of life, with a large fortune, and perfect health to enjoy it, is likely to be popular-if only on account of his rarity; and his present visit to the highly respectable person so obnoxious to Mr Clint, was an early result of the favourable impression he had made on strangers. Not one of his temporary associates had guessed Mr St Quentin's age so accurately as Miriam; he had passed easily with them for 'just turned fifty;' and he would not have been by any means gratified had he been aware of this particular exercise of that bright intelligence' on the part of his hostess' young friend, which he had commended as warmly as her handsome face and capital seat on horseback.

It is a favourite delusion with women that they

look well in the saddle; whereas, even pretty women rarely stand the test of the dress and the attitude successfully; but in Miriam Clint's case it was not a delusion. When, as he was walking his horse slowly alongside of Mr Cooke's, through one of the few pretty lanes in that part of the country, Miriam came up towards them at a canter, her rare golden eyes sparkling, and her fair cheeks flushed with air and exercise, Mr St Quentin thought it was the pleasantest apparition he had seen for many a long year; and the unexpected meeting, one of the most agreeable surprises within his experience. Miriam was on her way to the parsonage, and the two gentlemen rode back thither with her. Mr Cooke was too conscientious a man to indulge in uncharitable speaking concerning one of his parishioners; but his wife, who disliked Mr Clint on the particular grounds of his impertinence to her husband, as well as on the general score of his misbehaviour in all the relations of life, conceived herself absolved, by the particular grievance, from much tenderness towards Miriam's father. Accordingly, when her visitor questioned her respecting the pretty girl with whom Mrs Cooke had shared his extravagant gift of flowers, sent down from London, the rector's wife told him a very unvarnished tale indeed. She dwelt chiefly on Mr Clint's conduct to Walter, and the fatal estrangement between the father and son; but she also drew a picture of Miriam's uncongenial and depressing life at the Firs; a portion of her theme in which Mr St Quentin evinced a much more lively interest.

'Am I likely to see this pleasant specimen of paternity?' asked Mr St Quentin.

"Certainly not here. He and Mr Cooke do not speak, and Miriam's visits are permitted only on sufferance, and the tacit condition that they are not frequent. I fancy she has more tact than poor Walter had, and manages her impracticable father better.'

'Tact is an especial attribute of your sex.'

'So men say. Assuredly we need it in dealing with yours. In this case, it is a pity Walter was not the girl, and Miriam the boy.' 'Is he so very weak then?' 'No; I don't think so- -but she is so very strong. never knew a girl of her age with anything like Miriam Clint's determination of character. One perceives it in everything, small and great.

I

'She is very handsome,' said Mr St Quentin, in a tone which somewhat puzzled Mrs Cooke, but which signified that the speaker was disposed to regard Miss Clint's beauty as an excuse and compensation for so unnecessary and undesirable a quality as determination of character. No more was said on that occasion concerning Miss Clint; but Mr St Quentin took care to ride in the direction of the Firs on the following day, and this time also he met Miriam. She was walking, accompanied by her maid; and if Mr St Quentin had been a younger man with quick sight, he might have seen that Miriam's arm rested on that of her attendant, which she squeezed significantly as she relinquished it. He might also have seen that the attendant folded up a letter hastily, and put it in her pocket, as she fell back into her proper place. But Mr St Quentin observed neither of these things; he only saw that Miriam was there, looking blooming, lovely, and glad to see him. With all the grace and elasticity which he could muster, he dismounted,