the gable window drooped or fluttered as the breeze rose or fell, all alone. The hand that fixed it in its station left it there - the face vanished. After all, it was only a fichu or tippet belonging to one of the maids, I thought, hung out to dry; but at first it had seemed to me to be a vignette belonging to some little history.

We waited an hour at least for dinner that evening, and, after all, had it alone. Our grandfather brought some one home with him, whom he took into his private room, and we were left to ourselves.

family of wrens flitting in and out of the honeysuckle bush; but by degrees my thoughts went back to the shock which the intrusion of that death-image had given me, and I pondered on the wonder of unfolded destiny. If mother could have seen on even one such day as this the image my brain bears now if she could have known what the bud of Llewellyn's life Gladys came back from her walk in was going to unfold into-and to think immense spirits. The expedition had that God knows the whole always all at been a great success. She had made aconce, one may say. And I thought it is quaintance accidentally with, she assured like this. We are like persons travelling me, the jolliest family, living at Rhosco in a train or carriage, who look out from a lyn, half-way between Colwyn and the vilwindow upon the country as they pass, | lage she had walked to in the morning. seeing just as much as can be taken in at They were rather the great people of the one time by the framed space; we see neighborhood, we found out afterwards; things in succession. But any one who but all Gladys knew then was that they looks from a height at rest sees the whole were coming to call upon us and meant to simultaneously. And what is true of place ask us to go and see them. 'They don't is true of time. I turned this thought over like our grandfather," Gladys said. "I in my mind as I sat under the honey- am sure of that by the way they spoke of suckles, looking towards the house without him. Well, no more do I now." Just seeing, until at last I found that I was then I was listening nervously for the re watching something take place at a win-turn of Mr. Colwyn. dow in the gable end of the higher roof. The window had been opened since I began to look-the lattice having been fastened far back, and a figure inside the room had passed to and fro several times in front of the open space. As I began to be conscious of this, the figure came faceways to the lattice, and stood there opposite where I was sitting. The window was too far away for me to see the face distinctly. It looked small and white, I thought, and there was some kind of head-keeper), we had turned our chairs, facing dress that formed a setting to the face. Presently I could see that the hands of the person were busied with something, and that the arms leaned a little way over the window-sill; a small stick was fastened in the wall below the sill, and then one hand unrolled from round the stick a small white flag. A light breeze caught it quickly, and floated the flag out to its full size. It was fringed with lace, and looked like a large muslin handkerchief or veil such as any one might use to cover a baby's face in the air. I remembered to have once seen a kerchief, beautifully soft and dainty, laid away amongst mother's pretty things, and hearing mother say it had been used for her when she was a baby. I always pictured to myself a lady's hand decked with rings like mother's spreading this handkerchief over the face of a little baby, and I used to say, "That must have been grandmother's hand." But we never heard anything about our grandmother, so there was nobody in my imagination to fit the hand. The flag from

"My luck, you see, child," Gladys was saying to me as, the dinner having been cleared away, and fruit put on the table (the custom of having dessert was new since we came; Gladys had wrung the concession from Miss Hughes, the house

each other sideways, to the open window, and were beginning to enjoy the dusky hour, too light for candles and too dark for anything but talk. “Just my luck," Gladys was saying, when-the diningroom door opened. Gladys put the cherry back on her plate she was going to eat, and turned to look who was coming in. I could not have looked for the world, though I might have guessed that the feathery sound made by that entrance could not have heralded Mr. Colwyn. Tripping footsteps and a gentle rustling came out of the darkness of the doorway into the room towards where we were sitting, a chair was moved and placed between us, facing the window, and we were a party of three.

Poor little grandmother, that was the first time we saw her; it was the begin ning of our knowing that we had a grandmother. Gladys had been watching her all the time since the door opened until she sat down between us. I watched Gladys, and the expression of her face

puzzled me; she was not frightened by | been, but only by the Welsh name of

and about her new acquaintances; and we | next day, that the trouble about grandplanned where we should receive them mother was the worse of the two, and she when they called, and how we would make has always said so; but then Gladys was the drawing-room look a little less shabby, not afraid of Mr. Colwyn. "Afraid of and that we should put flowers about, and him, Madeleine," she said to me, after coax Miss Hughes to give afternoon tea one of his outbursts of tyrannical anger. to our visitors. It was the sort of talk "Afraid of him? No; I despise him too that felt like putting on cheerful every-day much." And Mr. Colwyn himself felt clothes after being at a funeral. We this, and it was he who quailed before her. managed to get a good laugh out of it at He seemed to understand ever after the last, and by-and-by settled for the night. day of their first quarrel that Gladys knew his secret vice. I don't think it troubled him to guess whether I knew about it or not, he always ignored me.

E. KEARY.

By Gladys's stillness I knew that she soon fell asleep; but the first twittering of the birds began in the July morning before I had closed my eyes. There had But if Gladys did not fear our grandbeen no noises in the house through the father, there was one person in the house short night, and I thought at first when I whom she could never close round or use, heard a door down below open and shut, who fairly baffled her - and that one was and then the front door do the same, and Eleanor Hughes, the housekeeper. The then a sound of people on the stairs, that history about her came out by degrees; it the servants were about early, perhaps it was told to me, not to Gladys, and Gladys was washing-day. By that time in my life never knew it all, for I folded down that I had had many dreadful surprises, but I leaf in the family record, and kept the scarcely think any one of them had shaken memory of it secret. It troubled me for me more than did the surprise of the next a long time, but now I have really forgotfew moments. There was such a curious ten most of the details. Gladys could halting about the sounds I heard, and at never understand what she called "Ellast a noise so like that of a fall, that, not eanor's cheek," and try as much as she able to bear the suspense of ignorance could to put the housekeeper down, she any longer, I got up, and opening the bed- never succeeded in doing so. My instincroom door cautiously, for fear of disturb. tive dislike to her developed into a welling Gladys, went to the head of the stairs. grounded abhorrence. Our grandfather was sitting, dressed as in the morning, upon the landing, leaning back against Miss Hughes's kneeling fig. ure. She was trying to support him, and just as I came, she, having her back to me, not seeing me, began to speak to him. I couldn't believe my senses; she called him horrid names, she upbraided him, she scolded and taunted him as if he had been her inferior and she a hard mistress. But for all her scolding, she could not make him get up. He was helplessly drunk. My first impulse was to steal back to my room and lock myself in, and leave Miss Hughes to fight her battle with Mr. Colwyn as best she could. I hated her so for the way she spoke to him. I felt as if I couldn't help ber. I almost hated him too; but he was our grandfather; he was a gentleman, and she a common person to speak to him so! In spite of myself, however, I came down to the landing and stood beside the housekeeper, and put my strength to hers, and between us we got him on his feet, and led him to his room, and there, I suppose, she put him to bed. When I was alone again I faced resolutely the discoveries of that day. Our grandmother was insane, Mr. Colwyn was a drunkard.

Gladys said, after I had told her all the

From The Contemporary Review. ARISTOTLE AS A NATURALIST. HAVING had occasion of late years to make myself acquainted with the observations and ideas of ancient writers upon matters connected with natural history, and having been thus more than ever impressed by the unique position which in this respect is held by Aristotle, it appears to me that a short essay upon the subject may prove of interest to readers of various kinds. Therefore, as far as space permits, I will render the results of my own inquiries in this direction; but as it is far from an easy task to estimate with justice the scientific claims of so prescientific a writer, I shall be greatly obliged to more professed students of Aristotle if they will indicate - either publicly or privately. any errors of fact or of judgment into which it may appear that I have fallen.

Aristotle died B.C. 322, in the sixty-third year of his age. As a personal friend and devoted pupil of Plato who, in turn, was

a friend and pupil of Socrates

his mind

was at an early age brought under the im- | in this direction has come down to us, it mediate influence of the best thinking of is still regarded as one of the best treatises antiquity. Nevertheless, although enter- that has ever been written on the subject. taining a profound veneration for his mas- His " Ethics," Rhetoric," and "Logic,' ter, like a true devotee of truth he did not also, still present much more than a merely allow his mind to become unduly domi- historical interest; for he may be said to nated even by the authority of so august have correctly laid down the fundamental a tutor; and in after life he expressly principles of these sciences - his analysis broke away from the more mystical prin- of the syllogism, in particular, having left ciples of Platonic method. While still a but comparatively little for subsequent young man he was invested with the mag-logicians to complete. And, lastly, his nificent office of educating Alexander the " 'Metaphysics" alone would have been Great. He held this position for a period sufficient to have placed him among the of four years, and then the young prince, greatest thinkers of antiquity. at the age of eighteen, became regent. It is interesting to note that the relations which subsisted between this greatest philosopher and this greatest general in the world's history were throughout relations of warmest friendship. Indeed, had it not been for the munificent aid which was afterwards given by Alexander, it would have been impossible for Aristotle to have prosecuted the work which he accomplished.

Questions have been raised, not only as to the authenticity of this work, but also as to the originality of much that is undoubtedly authentic. Into these questions, however, I need not go. Whether or not Aristotle borrowed from other writers without acknowledgment, it is certain that in his writings alone are preserved the records of early biological thought and observation, which would otherwise have been lost; and the preservation of these records is of more importance for our present purpose than is the question to whom such thought and observation were in every case due.

Whether we look to its width or to its depth, we must alike conclude that the range of Aristotle's work is wholly without a parallel in the history of mankind. Indeed it may be said that there is scarcely any one department of intellectual activity where the mind of this intellectual giant has not exerted more or less influence in some cases by way of creation, in others by way of direction. The following is a list of the subjects on which Aristotle wrote: physics, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, comparative anatomy, physiol. ogy, and psychology; poetry, ethics,, rhetoric, logic, politics, and metaphysics. Of these subjects he was most successful in his treatment of the second series as I have arranged them-or of the more abstract and least rigidly scientific. In his "Politics" he gave the outlines of two hundred and twenty-five constitutions, and although but a fragment of his whole work

That his labors in the field of more exact science should not now present a comparable degree of value, is, of course, inevitable. At the time when he wrote the very methods of exact science were unknown; and I think it constitutes the strongest of all his many claims to our intellectual veneration that he was able to perceive so largely as he did the superior value of the objective over the subjective methods in matters pertaining to natural science. When we remember how inveterate and how universal is the bondage of all early thought to the subjective methods; when we remember that for the best part of twenty centuries after the birth of Aristotle, the intellect of Europe was still held fast in the chains of that bondage; and when we remember that even at the present time, with all the advantages of a long and painful experience, we find it so extremely difficult to escape it; when we remember these things, we can only marvel at the scientific instinct of this man who, although nurtured in the school of Plato, was able to see darkly, it may be, and, as it were, in the glass of future things, but still was able to see - that the true method of science is the method of observation and experiment. "Men who desire to learn," he said, "must first learn to doubt; for science is only the solution of doubts;" and it is not possible more concisely to state the intellectual duty of scepticism, or the paramount necessity of proof, which thousands of years of wasted toil have now enabled all intelligent men more or less to realize.

Nevertheless, as I have said, the vision of scientific method which Aristotle had was a vision of that which is only seen in part; the image of the great truth which he perceived was largely distorted by passing through the medium of pre-existing thought. Consequently, of late years a great deal of discussion has taken place on the subject of Aristotle's method. the one hand, it is maintained that he is

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