shot to Mrs. Poyntz's side, and said, "Ten thousand pardons for quitting you so soon, but the clock warns me that I have an engagement elsewhere." In another moment he was gone. The dance halted, people seemed slowly returning to their senses, looking at each other bashfully and ashamed. "I could not help it, dear," sighed Miss Brabazon at last, sinking into a chair, and casting her deprecating, fainting eyes upon the hostess. "It is witchcraft," said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping her forehead. "Witchcraft!" echoed Mrs. Poyntz; "it does indeed look like it. An amazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to be endured by the Proprieties. Where on earth can that young savage have come from ?" "From savage lands," said I. "So he says." "Do not bring him here again," said Mrs. Poyntz. "He would soon turn the Hill topsyturvy. But how charming! I should like to see more of him,” she added, in an under voice, "if he would call on me some morning, and not in the presence of those for whose Proprieties I am responsible. Jane must be out in her ride with the Colonel." Margrave never again attended the patrician festivities of the Hill. Invitations were poured upon him, especially by Miss Brabazon and the other old maids, but in vain. "Those people," said he, "are too tame and civilised for me; and so few young persons among them. Even that girl Jane is only young on the surface; inside, as old as the World or her mother. I like youth, real youth-I am young, I am young!" And, indeed, I observed that he would attach himself to some young person, often to some child, as if with cordial and special favour, yet for not more than an hour or so, never distinguishing them by the same preference when he next met them. I made that remark to him, in rebuke of his fickleness, one evening when he had found me at work on my Ambitious Book, reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature. "It is not fickleness," said he, "it is necessity." 66 Necessity! Explain yourself." "I seek to find what I have not found," said he; "it is my necessity to seek it, and among the young; and disappointed in one, I turn to the other. Necessity again. But find it at last I must." "I suppose you mean what the young usually seck in the young; and if, as you said the other day, you have left love behind you, you now wander back to re-find it." "Prove your words, and command my services," said I, smiling somewhat disdainfully. "You told me that you had examined into the alleged phenomena of animal magnetism, and proved some persons who pretend to the gift which the Scotch call second sight to be bungling impostors. You were right. I have seen the clairvoyants who drive their trade in this town; a common gipsy could beat them in their own calling. But your experience must have shown you that there are certain temperaments in which the gift of the Pythoness is stored, unknown to the possessor, undetected by the common observer; but the signs of which should be as apparent to the modern physiologist as they were to the ancient priest." "I at least, as a physiologist, am ignorant of the signs-what are they?" I should despair of making you comprehend them by mere verbal description. I could guide your observation to distinguish them unerringly were living subjects before us. But not one in a million has the gift to an extent available for the purposes to which the wise would apply it. Many have imperfect glimpses, few, few indeed, the unveiled, lucent sight. They who have but the imperfect glimpses, mislead and dupe the minds that consult them, because, being sometimes marvellously right, they excite a credulous belief in their general accuracy; and as they are but translators of dreams in their own brain, their assurances are no more to be trusted than are the dreams of common-place sleepers. But where the gift exists to perfection, he who knows how to direct and to profit by it should be able to discover all that he desires to know for the guidance and preservation of his own life. He will be forewarned of every danger, forearmed in the means by which danger is avoided. For the eye of the true Pythoness matter has no obstruction, space no confines, time no measurement." "My dear Margrave, you may well say that creatures so gifted are rare; and for my part, I would as soon search for a unicorn, as, to use your affected expression, for a Pythoness." "Nevertheless, whenever there come across the course of your practice some young creature to whom all the evil of the world is as yet unknown, to whom the ordinary cares and duties of the world are strange and unwelcome; who from the earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit apart and to muse; before whose eyes visions pass unsolicited; who converses with those who are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the. space landscapes which the earth does not reflect "Margrave, Margrave! of whom do you speak?" "Tush! If I may judge by the talk of young fools, love may be found every day by him who "Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive, looks out for it. What I seek is among the has still a health and a soundness in which you rarest of all discoveries. You might aid me to recognise no disease; whose mind has a truthfind it, and in so doing aid yourself to a know-fulness that you know cannot deceive you, and a ledge far beyond all that your formal experi- simple intelligence too clear to deceive itself; ments can bestow." who is moved to a mysterious degree by all the varying aspects of external nature-innocently | By the way, how close and reserved you are with joyous, or unaccountably sad ;-when, I say, such me.' a being comes across your experience, inform me; and the chances are that the true Pythoness is found." I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one exclamation of amazement, to descriptions which brought Lilian Ashleigh before me; and I now sat mute, bewildered, breathless, gazing upon Margrave, and rejoicing that at least Lilian he had never seen. "How so?" "You never told me that you were engaged to be married. You leave me, who thought to have won your friendship, to hear what concerns you so intimately from a comparative stranger." "Who told you?" 'That woman with eyes that pry and lips that scheme, to whose house you took me." "Mrs. Poyntz! is it possible? When ?" "This afternoon. I met her in the street-she He returned my own gaze steadily, searchingly, and then, breaking into a slight laugh, re-stopped me, and, after some unmeaning talk, sumed: "You call my word 'Pythoness' affected. I know of no other. My recollections of classic anecdote and history are confused and dim; but somewhere I have read or heard that the priests of Delphi were accustomed to travel chiefly into Thrace or Thessaly, in search of the virgins who might fitly administer their oracles, and that the oracles gradually ceased in repute as the priests became unable to discover the organisation requisite in the priestesses, and supplied by craft and imposture, or by such imperfect fragmentary developments as belong now to professional clairvoyants, the gifts which Nature failed to afford. Indeed, the demand was one that must have rapidly exhausted so limited a supply. The constant strain upon faculties so wearing to the vital functions in their relentless exercise, under the artful stimulants by which the priests heightened their power, was mortal, and no Pythoness ever retained her life more than three years from the time that her gift was elaborately trained and developed." asked if I had seen you lately; if I did not find "Very rich, good-looking, young. Do you fear him? You turn pale." "I do not fear, except so far as he who loves truly, loves humbly, and fears not that another may be preferred, but that another may be worthier of preference than himself. But that Mrs. Poyntz should tell you all this does amaze me. Did she mention the name of the young lady?" "Yes: Lilian Ashleigh. Henceforth be more frank with me. Who knows? I may help you. Adieu!" CHAPTER XXVII. WHEN Margrave had gone, I glanced at the clock-not yet nine. I resolved to go at once to Mrs. Poyntz. It was not an evening on which she received, but doubtless she would see me. She owed me an explanation. How thus carelessly divulge a secret she had been enjoined to "Pooh! I know of no classical authority for keep? and this rival, of whom I was ignorant? the details you so confidently cite. Perhaps It was no longer a matter of wonder that Marsome such legends may be found in the Alexan-grave should have described Lilian's peculiar drian Platonists, but those mystics are no autho-idiosyncrasies in his sketch of his fabulous rity on such a subject. After all," I added, re- Pythoness. Doubtless, Mrs. Poyntz had, with covering from my first surprise, or awe, "the unpardonable levity of indiscretion, revealed all Delphic oracles were proverbially ambiguous, and their responses might be read either way; a proof that the priests dictated the verses, though their arts on the unhappy priestess might throw her into real convulsions, and the real convulsions, not the false gift, might shorten her life. Enough of such idle subjects! Yet no! one question more. If you found your Pythoness, what then ?" "What then? Why, through her aid I might discover the process of an experiment which your practical science would assist me to complete." "Tell me of what kind is your experiment; and precisely because such little science as I possess is exclusively practical, I may assist you without the help of the Pythoness." of which she disapproved in my choice. But for what object? Was this her boasted friendship for me? Was it consistent with the regard she professed for Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian? Occupied by these perplexed and indignant thoughts, I arrived at Mrs. Poyntz's house, and was admitted to her presence. She was fortunately alone; her daughter and the Colonel had gone to some party on the Hill. I would not take the hand she held out to me on entrance; seated myself in stern displeasure, and proceeded at once to inquire if she had really betrayed to Mr. Margrave the secret of my engagement to Lilian. "Yes, Allen Fenwick; I have this day told, not only Mr. Margrave, but every person I met who is likely to tell it to some one else, the secret of your engagement to Lilian Ashleigh. I never promised to conceal it; on the contrary, I wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would therein act as my own judgment counselled me. I think my words to you were that 'public gossip was I cannot say more now, my brain is fatigued; sometimes the best security for the fulfilment of and you are not yet in the right mood to hear me. | private engagements.'" Margrave was silent for some minutes, passing his hand several times across his forehead, which was a frequent gesture of his, and then rising, he answered, in listless accents: 66 "Do you mean that Mrs. or Miss Ashleigh | And now," added Mrs. Poyntz, rising and walkrecoils from the engagement with me, and that I ing across the room to her bureau-"now I will should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by show you Lady Haughton's invitation to Mrs. calling in the public to censure them-if-if- Ashleigh. Here it is!" Oh, madam, this is worldly artifice indeed!" I ran my eye over the letter, which she thrust into my hand, resuming her knitwork while I read. "Women's postscripts are proverbial for their significance," said Mrs. Poyntz, when I had concluded the letter and laid it on the table; "Be good enough to listen to me quietly. I have never yet showed you the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady Haughton, and deli- The letter was short, couched in conventional vered by Mr. Vigors. That letter I will now terms of hollow affection. The writer blamed show to you; but before doing so I must enter herself for having so long neglected her brother's into a preliminary explanation. Lady Haughton widow and child; her heart had been wrapped up is one of those women who love power, and too much in the son she had lost; that loss had cannot obtain it except through wealth and made her turn to the ties of blood still left to station-by her own intellect never obtain it. her; she had heard much of Lilian from their When her husband died she was reduced from common friend, Mr. Vigors; she longed to eman income of twelve thousand a year to a jointure brace so charming a niece. Then followed the of twelve hundred, but with the exclusive guar-invitation and the postscript. The postscript dianship of a young son, a minor, and adequate ran thus, so far as I can remember: "Whatever allowances for the charge; she continued, there- my own grief at my irreparable bereavement, I fore, to preside as mistress over the establish- am no egotist, I keep my sorrow to myself. You ments in town and country; still had the admi- will find some pleasant guests at my house, nistration of her son's wealth and rank. She among others our joint connexion, young Ashstinted his education, in order to maintain her leigh Sumner." ascendancy over him. He became a brainless prodigal-spendthrift alike of health and fortune. Alarmed, she saw that, probably, he would die young and a beggar; his only hope of reform" and if I did not at once show you this hypowas in marriage. She reluctantly resolved to critical effusion, it was simply because at the marry him to a penniless, well-born, soft-minded name Ashleigh Sumner its object became transyoung lady whom she knew she could control: parent, not perhaps to poor Anne Ashleigh nor just before this marriage was to take place he to innocent Lilian; but to my knowledge of the was killed by a fall from his horse. The Haugh- parties concerned, as it ought to be to that ton estate passed to his cousin, the luckiest shrewd intelligence which you derive partly young man alive; the same Ashleigh Sumner from nature, partly from the insight into life who had already succeeded, in default of male which a true physician cannot fail to acquire. issue, to poor Gilbert Ashleigh's landed pos- And if I know anything of you, you would have sessions. Over this young man Lady Haughton romantically said, had you seen the letter at first, could expect no influence. She would be a and understood its covert intention, 'Let me not stranger in his house. But she had a niece! shackle the choice of the woman I love, and to Mr. Vigors assured her the nicce was beautiful. whom an alliance so coveted in the eyes of the And if the niece could become Mrs. Ashleigh world might, if she were left free, be proffered." " Sumner, then Lady Haughton would be a less "I should not have gathered from the postunimportant Nobody in the world, because she script all that you see in it, but had its purport would still have her nearest relation in a Some-been so suggested to me, you are right, I should body at Haughton Park. Mr. Vigors had his own pompous reasons for approving an alliance which he might help to bring about. The first step towards that alliance was obviously to bring into reciprocal attractions the natural charms of the young lady and the acquired merits of the young gentleman. Mr. Vigors could easily induce his ward to pay a visit to Lady Haughton, and Lady Haughton had only to extend her invitations to her niece; hence the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, of which Mr. Vigors was the bearer, and hence my advice to you, of which you can now understand the motive. Since you thought Lilian Ashleigh the only woman you could love, and since I thought there were other women in the world who might do as well for Ashleigh Sumner, it seemed to me fair for all parties that "I know everything that concerns me; and here, Lilian should not go to Lady Haughton's in the explanation is simple. My aunt, Lady Delaignorance of the sentiments with which she had field, is staying with Lady Haughton. Lady Delainspired you. A girl can seldom be sure that field is one of the women of fashion who shine she loves until she is sure that she is loved. | by their own light; Lady Haughton shines by have so said. Well, and as Mr. Margrave tells me that you informed him that I have a rival, I am now to conclude that the rival is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner ?" "Has not Mrs. Ashleigh or Lilian mentioned him in writing to you?” "Yes, both; Lilian very slightly; Mrs. Ashleigh with some praise, as a young man of high character, and very courteous to her." "Yet, though I asked you to come and tell me who were the guests at Lady Haughton's, you never did so." "Pardon me; but of the guests I thought nothing, and letters addressed to my heart seemed to me too sacred to talk about. And Ashleigh Sumner then courts Lilian! How do you know ?" borrowed light, and borrows every ray she can indispensable to the decencies of civilised life, I find." took my departure, returned home, and wrote to Lilian. "And Lady Delafield writes you word"That Ashleigh Sumner is caught by Lilian's beauty." "Women like Lady Delafield do not readily believe that any girl would refuse Ashleigh Sumner; considered in himself, he is steady and good-looking; considered as owner of Kirby Hall and Haughton Park, he has, in the eyes of any sensible mother, the virtues of Cato, and the beauty of Antinous." I pressed my hand to my heart-close to my heart lay a letter from Lilian-and there was no word in that letter which showed that her heart was gone from mine. I shook my head gently, and smiled in confiding triumph. Mrs. Poyntz surveyed me with a bent brow and a compressed lip. "I understand your smile," she said, ironically. "Very likely Lilian may be quite un touched by this young man's admiration, but Anne Ashleigh may be dazzled by so brilliant a prospect for her daughter. And, in short, I thought it desirable to let your engagement be publicly known throughout the town to-day; that information will travel-it will reach Ashleigh Sumner through Mr. Vigors, or others in this neighbourhood, with whom I know that he corresponds. It will bring affairs to a crisis, and before it may be too late. I think it well that Ashleigh Sumner should leave that house; if he leave it for good so much the better. And, perhaps, the sooner Lilian returns to L- the lighter your own heart will be." 66 And for these reasons you have published the secret of" THE GENII OF THE LAMPS. THERE has been little rest during the present century for underground London. Some road has always been "up" that pipes may be laid down, or tunnels may be constructed. When sewers were not being built, in 1812, the water companies were changing their rotten wooden mains for iron pipes that would bear the pressure necessary for serving their hill customers. Side by side with the workmen of the water companies, were other workmen employed by the then infant interest. Coming gas down to our own days, we have railway tunnels, building or projected, and telegraphic wirepipes, and "pneumatic dispatch" tubes strug gling for the few spare feet of underground trivances in London evidently follow the law of roadway. Many of our social scientific conwould be easy for some Oriental traveller to gravitation, and tend towards the centre. It selves, and to show that we have grown too turn our Chinese population tables against ournumerous to live upon the surface. By a stretch of fancy not at all beyond the powers of descriptive travellers, it could be shown that if another man were placed upon this island he must necessarily drop off into the sea for want of standing-room. It would have been a sight worth seeing-a picture worth drawing-the first laying of a gaspipe in London. The landing of Julius Cæsar, the signing of Magna Charta, and the death of Harold, furnish more romantic groupings for historical painters; but no one can say that they were of more historical importance. Civilisation took a vast stride on that eventful occasion "Your engagement? Yes. Prepare to be congratulated wherever you go. And now, if you hear, either from mother or daughter, that Ash--the living out-door life of man was lengthened leigh Sumner has proposed, and been, let us say, refused, I do not doubt that in the pride of your heart you will come and tell me." "Rely upon it I will; but before I take my leave, allow me to ask, why you described to a young man like Mr. Margrave-whose wild and strange humours you have witnessed and not approved-any of those traits of character in Miss Ashleigh which distinguish her from other girls of her age ?" "I? You mistake. I said nothing to him of her character. I mentioned her name, and said she was beautiful, that was all." “Nay, you said that she was fond of musing, of solitude; that in her fancies she believed in the reality of visions which might flit before her eyes as they flit before the eyes of all imaginative dreamers." "Not a word did I say to Mr. Margrave of such peculiarities in Lilian; not a word more than what I have told you, on my honour!" Still incredulous, but disguising my incredulity with that convenient smile by which we accomplish so much of the polite dissimulation The more than one-half; and yet no one was present to give the great work a pictorial record. battle of Waterloo was a mere puff of smoke in comparison, for all its deposit of pictures, statues, and treaties. Of course the workmen were obedient, but sceptical. I can imagine them being very much like the attendant on the alchemists in Teniers's sketch, who holds the crucible over the fire, in the attempt to produce gold, as if it were a vulgar frying-pan, half-full of sausages. It is easy to call such people louts, and to judge them by what we know now, rather than by what was known then; but such louts represent a very wholesome degree of scepticism. For one discovery that has lived through the practical test of application, and has really benefited the world, a thousand have been the pet children of quacks and visionaries. Until the new comer makes good its claim to be considered something beyond the common herd, we save our time, our money, and our labour, by regarding it cautiously. The discoverers of gas-lighting had no more than ordinary difficulties to contend with in ap plying their discovery, and it is fortunate for into the basis of a business corporation, and this them that they did not appear three centuries by unflinching perseverance, devotion to one earlier. I am not speaking of Mr. Thomas Shirley, whose "description of a well and earth in Lancashire taking fire by a candle approached to it," in 1667,* is the first known English account of inflammable coal-gas; nor of Dr. John Clayton's accidental discovery of the same fact a few years later, when he constructed the first gas-holder by enclosing the gas in a bladder; nor of Dr. Richard Watson, who experimented on the same gas in various ways in 1767. I am thinking of Mr. Spedding, who was the first to apply coal-gas escaping from a mine to any economical purpose, by lighting his office at Whitehaven with it about the same period, and who made a proposition to the magistrates to light the town in the same manner. His proposal was simply refused, and little more was said; but had Mr. Spedding lived in the fifteenth instead of the eighteenth century, he would most probably have been tortured as a wizard. Mr. Murdock, the first recorded applier of artificially manufactured gas to house-lighting purposes, who began to use it in Cornwall in 1792, and who seems to have partly purified it from smell and smoke, while lighting Messrs. Boulton and Watt's factory at Birmingham with it, in 1798, was another gentleman who had cause to be thankful to the age he lived in. His illuminations at Birmingham in 1802, would have carried him to the martyr's stake in the good old days; and his successor, Mr. Winsor, would have been nipped in the bud. Much abuse has been lavished upon poor Mr. Winsor, because he was not a sound scientific man, and because he was energetic and unscrupulous in carrying out his plans. His science was sufficient to teach him what he had to deal with; and he was the first man to light a London street with gas, and the first to make gas-lighting a branch of commerce. He publicly exhibited his plan of illumination at the Lyceum Theatre in 1803 and 1804; and he lighted up one side of Pall-Mall in 1807. His rude lighting was as much an advance upon the old oil-lamps, as those lamps were an improvement upon the old lighting system existing in 1716, when each householder, whose premises fronted any street, lane, or passage, was required to hang out one or more lights every dark night, to burn from six to eleven o'clock, under the penalty of one shilling. His commercial scheme took the form of a National Light and Heat Company, of very extravagant expectations; but it merged at last into the Gaslight and Coke Company, commonly called the Chartered Gas Company, which worked nobly for many years as a pioneer in gas-lighting, without the refreshing taste of a dividend. Few persons, perhaps, who were unlike Mr. Winsor, could have done what he did in the face of so much opposition grounded on caution and prejudice. While scientific men were playing with the new element in various ways, he helped to mould it idea, an absence of sensitiveness, and great oddity of character. Whatever his faults may have been, whatever schemes he may have originally planned for his own enrichment, he clung to his speculation through all its early struggles, and no one has ever shown that he amassed any private fortune. He deceived himself, in his imaginative estimates of profit, as much as he deceived others; and some of his pamphlets are distinguished, not only for their reckless statements, but for the strength and indignation of their tone. "All gas-lights," he says, "shown and exhibited before my illuminating the large theatre in the Lyceum, early in 1804, I fairly consider as so many Will-o'-the-wisp lights known for centuries past. The gas of these lights has been caught and collected in bladders, in marshy ground, the same as all coal-gas has hitherto been produced in bladders for philosophical amusement. The principle, that coal and other combustibles contained, among other products, a most beautiful and valuable flame, has been known by the most learned of the last century; but How to make the applicationHow to save and analyse-How to preserve and refine-How to conduct gas in proper air-tight tubes-How to introduce gas-fire and gas-lights into a drawing-room, shop, and street-lampHow to cook, melt, boil, and distil by a gas-fire, either in a kitchen or dining-room-How to introduce coke, tar, and ammonial liquor for the advantage of a whole nation-How to make gasfire and gas-lights applicable to light-houses, telegraphs, culinary purposes-in fine, How to save and employ all the valuable parts of raw fuel with the greatest possible advantage;—all these most difficult points of my discovery were left a problem to theorists, WHO could write, but not practise-WHO could fill bladders from retorts, tobacco-pipes, pots, pans, and gunbarrels, with raw smoke, but could not illuminate-WHOSE delicate hands and noses would have shrunk with horror from my numerous dirty and laborious experiments in kitchens and wash-houses, where my own labourers complained of being suffocated, and often refused to assist me, until I shamed them by the example of stripping to perform what they thought was too dirty work for them. "Animated by the life and example of Peter the Great, Emperor of all the Russias, who performed the most abject labours to teach his ministers and generals how to civilise a barbarous nation, I did no longer deem it beneath me (who had been a merchant in the city of London) to do that work which some of my labourers, actually in want of bread, refused to do for victuals and payment." Mr. Winsor, with all his pretence of mechanical completeness, never contemplated the erection of a gas-holder, or the storing of a reserve of gas in anything except the main pipes. It was left for Mr. Clegg, a pupil of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, and the earliest permanent engineer of the Chartered Gas Company, to in |