tine; but these youthful individuals could son to "make an excellent stepmother" afford him no information. "Oh, ay, to his seven children. Mary, who was they're maybe coming next month," said conscious in some small degree of the old Jean, who took a feminine pleasure worthy man's meaning, was grateful to in the dismay that was visible in Valen- Val for once; and enjoyed, as the quiettine's face. "They were here a' the est of women do, the discomfiture of her summer, June and July; and I wouldna would-be suitor. wonder but we'll see them all October if it's no too cauld," the old woman added, with a twinkle in her eye.

"What good will that do me?" said Val; and he leaped the dyke, and went home through the ferns angry with disappointment. And yet he was not at all in love with Violet, he thought, but only liked her as the nicest girl he knew. When he remarked to Lady Eskside that it was odd to find none of the Pringles at the Hewan, my lady arose and slew him on the spot. "Why should the Pringles be at the Hewan?" she said; "they have a place of their own, where it becomes them much better to be. To leave Violet there so long by herself last year was a scandal to her mother, and gave much occasion for talking."

"Why should it give occasion for talking?" said Val.

"Yes," she said, smiling; "what of it, you unruly boy?

"I am not a proper subject for such epithets," said Val. "I have attained my majority, and made a speech to the tenantry. I say, Mary, do you know, that's a lovely spot, that linn. I was there to-day

"Oh, you were there to-day?

"Yes, I was there. Is there anything wonderful in that?" said Val, not sure whether he ought not to take offence at the laughing tone, which seemed to imply something. "Tell Violet, when you see her, that it was uncommonly shabby of her not to come this year. We'd have gone again."

"There's a virtue in three times, Val," said Mary. If you go again, it will be more than a joke; and I don't think I'll give your message to Vi."

66

A boy like you knows nothing about Why should it be more than a the matter," the old lady answered, put-joke? Or why should it be a joke at ting a stop to him decisively. Perhaps all?" said Val, reddening, he scarcely that was true enough; but it was also knew why. He withdrew after this, true that Val took a long walk to the linn slightly confused, feeling as if some next day, and sat down under the bushes, chance touch had got at his heart, giving and mused for half an hour or so, without it a dinnle which was half pleasure and quite knowing what he was thinking half pain. Do you know what a dinnle about. How clearly he remembered those is, dear English reader? It means that two expeditions, mingling them a little in curious sensation which you, in the povhis recollection, yet seeing each so dis- erty of your language, call "striking the tinctly the small Violet in her blue funny bone." You know what it is in the cloak, sleeping on his shoulder (which elbow. Valentine had that kind of senthought made him colour slightly and sation in his heart; and I think if this laugh in the silence, such intimate com- half-painful jar of the nerve lasted, and panionship being strangely impossible to suggested quite new thoughts to the boy, think of nowadays), and the elder Violet, it was all Mary Percival's part. I am still so sweet and young, younger than happy to say that her widower got at her himself, though he was the very imper-on Val's withdrawal, and made himself sonation of Youth, repeating all the ear- most overpoweringly agreeable for the lier experiences except that one. "By rest of the night. Jove, how jolly Mary is!" said Valentine And then the boy went away on his to himself at the end of this reverie; and grand tour, leaving the old people at when he went home he devoted himself home rather lonely, longing after him; to Miss Percival, who was again at Ross- though Lord Eskside was too much occucraig, as she always was when Lady Esk- pied to take much notice of Val's deside was exposed to the strain and fa-parture. My lady was very busy, too, tigue of company. "Do you remember paying visits over all the country, and our picnic at the linn last year?" he said, paying court to great and small. She standing over Mary in a corner after promised the widower her interest with dinner, to the great annoyance of an Mary, but judiciously put him off till elderly admirer, who had meant to take Miss Percival's next visit, saying, cunthis opportunity of making himself agree- ningly, that she must have time to preable to a woman who seemed the very per-pare her young friend for the idea, and

trusting in Providence that the election professional circles of thieves themmight be over before an answer had to selves; and Dick could not banish from be given. It was gratifying to the Esk- his thoughts a painful doubt and uncersides to find a devoted canvasser for Val-tainty about his mother's relations with entine in the person of Lord Hightowers," Mr. Ross's people." She herself was the only possible competitor who could so stunned and petrified by the great have "divided the party" in the county. danger which she seemed to herself to Hightowers, however, was not fond of have escaped, that she was very little capolitics, and had no ambition for public pable of giving a rational explanation of life; it would have suited him better to her conduct. "You knew this lady bebe a locksmith, like Louis Seize. And fore, mother?" said Dick to her, half among them all, they got the county pitifully, half severely, as he took her into such a beautiful state of preparation back to the parlour and placed her in a that Lord Eskside could scarcely con- chair after the visitors were gone. "Yes," tain his rapture and having laid all his she answered, but no more. He asked trains and holding his match ready, sat her many other questions, but nothing down, in a state of excitement which it more than repeated Yes or No could he would be difficult to describe, to wait get in reply. until the moment of explosion came.

I do not know what wild sense of peril was in the poor creature's heart. She feared, perhaps, that they could have taken her up and punished her for running away from her husband; she felt sure that they would separate her from her remaining boy, though had they not the other, whom she had given up to them? and in her panic at the chance of being found out, all power of reasoning (if she ever had any) deserted her. Aḥ, she thought to herself, only a tramp is

In other places, too, Valentine's departure had caused far more excitement than he was at all aware of. He had seen and said good-bye to Dick, with the most cordial kindness, on the day he left Oxford. But Val had not failed to remark a gravity and preoccupation about his humble friend which troubled him in no small degree. When he recounted to Dick the failure of Lady Eskside and himself on the day before, the young man had received the information with a pain-safe! As soon as you have a settled ful attempt to seem surprised, which habitation, and are known to neighbours, made Val think for a moment that Dick's and can be identified by people about, all mother had avoided the visit of set pur- security leaves you: only on the tramp pose. But as he knew of no hidden im- is a woman who wishes to hide herself portance in this, the idea went lightly safe. In her first panic, the thought of out of his head; and a few days after he going away again, of deserting everyremembered it no more. Very much thing, of taking refuge on those open more serious had been the effect upon roads - those outdoor bivouacs which Dick. His mother's flight and her panic are full in the eye of day, yet better were equally unintelligible to him. The refuges than any mysterious darkness — thought that there must be "something came so strongly over her, that it was all wrong" involved, in order to produce she could do to withstand its force. But such terror, was almost irresistible; and when she looked at her son, active and Dick's breeding, as I have said, had been trim, in his boat-building yard, or saw of that practical kind which makes the him studying the little house at night, mind accustomed to the commoner and with his tools in his hand, to judge vulgarer sorts of wrong-doing. He did not where he could put up something or iminsist upon knowing what it was that prove something,- his mother felt hermade her afraid of Val's grandmother; self for the first (or perhaps it was but her abject terror, and the way in the second) time in her life, bound as which she dragged him, too, out of sight, it were by a hundred minute threads as if he had been a partner of her shame, which made it impossible for her to had the most painful effect upon the please herself. It was something like a young man. In the rudimentary state of new soul which had thus developed in morals which existed among the class her. In former times she had done as from which he sprang, and where all his the spirit moved her, obeying her imprimitive ideas had been formed, dis- pulses whenever they were so strong as to honesty was the one crime short of mur-carry everything else before them. Now der which could bring such heavy shame she felt a distinct check to the wild force along with it. He who steals is shunned of these impulses. The blood in her in all classes, except among the narrow veins moved as warmly as ever, impel

ON THE PERCEPTION OF THE INVISIBLE.

31

senses?" is a common enough expres-
sion. The world existed for centuries
before its rotundity was recognized — it
across the heavens,
appeared flat to the senses, the sun
seemed to move
while the earth was at rest. We know
with what opposition the fact that the
earth moves around the sun was received
In the sixteenth century,
by all classes. How many fully realize it
even now?
there were but ten Copernicans in the
world. The early ideas of all races rela-
tive to things beyond their ken, indicate
that the tendency has ever been to iden-
tify the unknown and the unknowable
with those things which are more famil-
iar to the senses. Thus, savages see the
storm-demon rushing wildly over the
skies; to them the sun is endowed with
life, and climbing the solid vault of
heaven; while lightning becomes fire
generated by the collision of clouds, after
the manner of a flint and steel.

ling her to go, and she knew that she was free to go if she would, and that Dick too could be vanquished, and would come with her, however unwillingly. She was free to go, and yet she could not. For the first time in her life she had learned consciously to prefer another to herself. She could not ruin Dick. The struggle that she maintained with her old self was violent, but it was within herself, and was known to nobody; and finally, the new woman, the higher creature, vanquished the old self-willed and self-regarding wanderer. She set herself to meet the winter with a dogged resolution, feeling less, perhaps, the absence of that visionary solace which she had found in the sight of Val, in consequence of the hard and perpetual battle she had to fight with herself. And, to make it harder, she had not the cheery gratitude and tender appreciation of the struggle, which had rewarded her much less vioThe thinking and observing man is, lent effort before. Dick was gloomy, overcast, pondering upon the strange however, perpetually reminded of the thing that had happened. He could not fact that his senses are limited in their get over it: it stood between him and capabilities of perception. Their operahis mother, making their intercourse tions are finite; and the limit, as regards constrained and unhappy. Had she the observation and examination of exThe existence of robbed the old lady from whom she had ternals, is reached much sooner than we fled in so strange a panic? Short of that, generally imagine. or something of that kind, why, poor Dick such instruments as the microscope, telthought, should one woman be so des-escope, and spectroscope, in itself indiThe star-depths cannot be penperately afraid of another? He did not, cates the limited action of the unassisted it is true, say, or even whisper to him- senses. nay, often the diatom itself self, this word so terrible to one in his etrated, the structure of the diatomaceæ insecure position, working his way in the world with slow and laborious ad- be perceived by the unaided eye; while wonderful system of celestial analysis revances; but the suspicion rankled in his the dark lines of the spectrum, and the sulting therefrom, would have remained heart. undiscovered had it not been for the prism, the substitution of the thin slice, for the circular beam, of light, employed by Newton, and the tutored eye of Wollaston.

From Macmillan's Magazine.
ON THE PERCEPTION OF THE INVISIBLE.

As a rule a man puts absolute faith in
his senses. A large proportion per-
haps ninety-nine out of a hundred of
the human race, recognize in all that be-
longs to the natural world those things
only which can be handled or seen; the
two most common attributes of that
which we call matter. Tell a half-edu-
cated man that the piece of chalk in his
hand is principally composed of the re-
mains of some millions of creatures
which once lived; that the glass of clear
water before him contains some thou-
sands of animalculæ, and he answers that
"Am
he will believe it when he sees it.
I not to believe the evidence of my

-

cannot

But it is not our intention to discredit the senses because their faculty of perception is limited. The senses are specially devoted to the composite organism of which they form a part. In all that directly concerns that organism they are perfect; but when we endeavour to press them into some special service apart from the welfare of the organism, when we require our senses to discern and investigate certain phenomena of the Now, the special external world, we find at once that their capabilities are finite. functions of the senses are to guard and protect our bodies, to give warning of impending dangers both from internal

32

to enable us to and external sources; repel the adverse assaults of the forces of nature; to benefit by all that Nature offers us-bright sunlight, pure air, beautiful scenery. Gravity would drag us over the edge of a precipice; the senses give warning, and we are safe accumulated snow would numb us into as the the long sleep, but so long senses remain sentinel over the organism, we resist the adverse influence. When the senses cease to give warning we perish; the sense-bereft madman dashes out his brains. The senses enable us to comply with all the conditions requisite for the maintenance of life, and they transmute for us various actions of the external world, such as certain movements of the molecules of air, and of the luminiferous ether, into actions capable of being recognized in a definite form, by the centre of perception - the brain. To these various sensations we give such names as Light, Heat, and Sound.

--

is it not enough that I and my companions have done everything thou hast chosen to command, but that thou repayest our services by an ingratitude that is unequalled?" It rather replies: "I cannot indeed see a molecule of oxygen gas, or discern the nature of the motion of heat; but I will do my best to distinguish them if you will help me." And thus we are led to augment the action of the senses, by using them in conjunction with suitable instruments of observation.

Let us be more precise as to this matter of the limited capacities of our senses. About us and around us, at all times and in all places, float myriads of harmonies which we hear not, myriads of images of The idea is very old : that the things unseen. the Pythagoreans asserted music of the spheres is not heard by man The because the narrow portals of the ears cannot admit so great a sound. peopling of the air with spirits, the existence of the idea of Djin, Kobold, and Fairy, all point to the prevalence of the idea that unseen agencies are forever Ten thousand motions sweep by, bathing us in their current, and we cannot recognize them. There are, if we may so express it, sounds which the ear cannot hear; light which the eye cannot see; heat which does not affect the senWe mean simply that there sory nerves. are actions precisely similar in kind to those which constitute ordinary sound, light, and heat, which do not affect our senses.

A horse runs away with a carriage a hundred yards behind us; the ear catches the sound, and conveys the impression "quick as thought," not "quick as light-about us. "> * to the brain; the latter issues ning its orders, the body turns round, the eye sees the horse, and communicates this new impression to the brain, which puts in action the muscles of the legs, and thus we jump aside and avoid being run over; the whole set of actions having occupied a remarkably small portion of a minute. As in the story of the belly and The difference is one of degree, the members, each organ works with, and for, the entire composite organism; not of form or kind. In fact, the differthe senses are faithful and loyal servants ence is no more than this: let us supof the kingdom of the whole body. But pose that a railway train passes us with when we ask that same faithful eye which a velocity which allows us clearly to disso recently helped to save us from de- tinguish the face of a friend in one of struction, to see the nature of the motion the carriages; next let us suppose the we call heat, or to distinguish a molecule velocity to be increased until we can no of oxygen gas, it can no longer serve us. longer distinguish him. These are difThese unwonted tasks bear the same rela-ferences of degree, not of kind; for the tion to it as did the roc's egg in the palace of Aladdin to the Genius of the Lamp ; but the eye does not reply to us as the Genius replied to Aladdin : What, wretch!

66

motion of the train is the same in kind and in direction, but of another degree, and this just makes the difference between recognizing our friend and not doing so. In the one instance the observaThe velocity of a sensory impulse travelling to the tion falls within the possible powers of brain has been determined to be about 44 metres (144 32 the eye; in the other the augmented vefeet) a second in man, while the velocity of a motor im-locity of the train passes the limit of obpulse travelling from the brain is believed to be 33 metres (108 24 feet) a second. The motion is slowest in the case of sight, less slow in hearing, least slow in touch. According to Donders it takes about one twenty-sixth part of a second to think (Nature, vol. ii. p. 2). The duration of a flash of lightning has been calculated by Sir Charles Wheatstone to be less than a thousandth part of a second. The velocity of electricity through short lengths of copper wire is, according to the same observer, 288,000 miles a second.

servation. Thus also with the motions of light, heat, and sound. Let them pass certain well-defined limits, and the unaided senses cease to recognize them. Our ears are deaf to sounds produced by more than 38,000 vibrations in a second; our eyes are blind to light produced by

more than 699.000,000,000,000 vibrations | hand into the midst of them, to see them in second. Each organ singles out a moving, or at least at the bounding surcertain limited range of vibrations, sharp- faces of the mass to feel the movement? ly bounded in both directions, beyond Only because our senses are not suffiwhich the organ ceases to recognize vi- ciently acute for this. The atoms move brations similarly generated, and differ- with excessive velocity, so that, as in the ing from the recognized vibrations only case of the whirled stick, they are, as far in rate of motion. This limited range is as the sense of sight is concerned, apparamply sufficient for the wants of the or- ently in two places at the same time; so ganism; but the vibrations beyond the also the nerves of touch are not sufrange in both directions, although they ficiently delicate to recognize the mimay not influence us, often influence nute moment of time required by an matter external to ourselves, as pro-atom to complete a vibration. For aught foundly as those which we recognize by we can tell to the contrary, that which our unaided senses. Hence, once more, to our senses is a cubic foot of iron may the necessity of exalting the action of the senses when we investigate external

matter.

be generated by the rapid vibration of a thin plate of iron one foot square within the limits of a foot in length. One more of the a very familiar oneAdmitting therefore the limited capa- example bilities of the senses, let us now go one fallacy of the senses, and we pass on to step further. When applied to the in-the more immediate subject of our disvestigation of Nature, the unaided senses cussion. Place three basins in a row: may not only fail us, but they may posi- pour cold water into the left-hand basin, tively deceive us by conveying false im-hot water into that on the right, and a pressions. A point of light (say the mixture of equal parts of the hot and glowing end of a lighted stick) if held at cold water into the central basin. If we rest appears as a point of light; if moved now dip our left hand into the cold rapidly in a line, as a line of light; if water, and our right hand into the warm whirled in a circle, as a circle of light; water, simultaneously remove them, and yet we know that the point of light can place them in the central basin, the lukewarm water in it will feel warm to the left only be in one place at one and the same instant of time. Or take the less evident hand, and cold to the right. Here, then, We have we have two absolutely antithetical sencase of the motion of heat. before us a mass, say a cubic foot, of sations communicated to the brain by iron. It appears to be as solid and as similar sets of nerves, and originated by motionless as anything we can well im- the same medium. Are we to believe agine. Yet all the observations of sci- the evidence of the right hand or of the ence point to the conclusion that its left, or are we to disbelieve both? The small particles or atoms are not in con-old story of the man who cooled his portact with each other; and that they are ridge and warmed his hands with the all moving with great relative velocity, same breath is equally to the point. We not directly forward with motion of trans- must recognize the fact that numberless lation, but vibrating about a position of actions of the external world, as conrest. If we cool our mass of iron we veyed and interpreted to us by the senses, observe that it occupies less bulk than are relative rather than absolute. before; hence clearly the atoms could not call a thing hot or cold according as it have been in contact before cooling, for happens to affect our senses at any parA traveller descending they have approached each other, and ticular time. matter is impenetrable: two things can- Chimborazo complains at a certain elevanot be in the same place at the same tion of the heat; a traveller who is as66 Change time. If we continue to cool the mass cending, and who meets him at the same of iron, it continues to get smaller, the place, complains of the cold. atoms approach closer and closer, and of impression," says Professor Bain, "is we have never been able to cool a body necessary to our being conscious.. until it contracts no longer; in fact, we The sensation of light supposes a transido not know of any substance whose tion from darkness or shade, or from a atoms are in contact. Yet our senses of less degree of illumination to a greater sight and of touch assure us that the... The principle of Relativity, or the iron consists of continuous matter. Now necessity of change in order to our being if the atoms are not in contact, and if conscious, is the groundwork of Thought, they are perpetually moving, why, we Intellect, or Knowledge, as well as of may ask, is it not possible to thrust our Feeling... Our knowledge begins, as 367 VOL. VIII.

LIVING AGE.

We