ward upon his oars to gaze the better draw on our little store of smiles to welcome them; and they give a good report of us to our acquaintances ("bright and cheery as ever, I do assure you "), and never guess that when they have gone the curtai falls, and our darkness is deeper than ever. at his fair companion, and she with down-drooped eyes, but a smile that proclaims her consciousness of his scrutiny, hangs one little hand in the water and watches it escape through her fingers. The time has come and gone long ago wherein we ought to These visits of our friends are at have been content "to go wooing in our once the cause of our joy and of our boys;" but that love-making by proxy, sorrow. It is sweet to be remembered with the fruition for others, was never, after social death. Our most tender as history tells us, a very welcome pro-reflection is the thought that when ceeding. And now, the remembrance nothing can be gained by it, not even of what was once so bright and sweet the reciprocity of geniality, these dear and fair, the parting and the meeting, kind folks leave their business or their the glance that was mirrored in a flash pleasure, and look in upon us, day after from loving eyes, the tell-tale pressure day. The Backwater is not a lively of the gentler hand, the stolen kiss so scene. It is always in the shadow tenderly forgiven, is of all remem- projected by the platform above the brances the most intolerable. Selfish? Weir, and the noise of the falling Yes; do not suppose that self, though waters is very melancholy; yet these different indeed from what it used to good souls do not desert us. Nay, be, with no bravery of pretence about there is something in our condition that it, querulous, degraded, does not still touches them in quite a remarkable cling to us; it is only to be washed manner. Even those who, when we away by the cleansing waters of the were among them, were mere acWeir. Yet, after all, we have no envy, quaintances develop the most friendly nor would we deprive our fellow-feeling, and make us ashamed of our creature of a single pleasure if we previous ignorance of its existence. To could. It is the mere sense of loss, "kindly Nature,' as she is called by irremediable and complete, that causes those who have experienced only her our despair. It will be shocking to good offices, we have, to tell the honmany persons (who are still alive and est truth, but little to be thankful for; in the world, however, and can follow it is to men and women that our feebly the pursuits they love) to learn that beating hearts go forth in unspeakable such views are entertained by indi- gratitude. There is one -one-conviduals in our position. We are gener- solation in our miserable lot, that it has ally depicted as being philosophic or brought us face to face with the imresigned, just as the blind (God help measurable goodness of Humanity. them!) are always described as "cheer- Let the divines say what they will of ful;" I do not know on whose account those who have been made after the this hypocrisy is maintained. image of their Creator; let them heap upon them all the faults of their fallen nature; let the cynics aver that what seems good in them is only another form of selfishness; we on the Backwater have good cause to know that these traducers lie. Oh, Love that cherishes its object when all that makes it lovely has departed, that prefers to possess it useless as a broken toy rather than to lose it, that slaves Alas! we have nor hope nor health, But it is not to be wondered at that others should take a brighter view of our condition. Just (again) as in the case of the blind, who are seen at their best in company, and strive to hide their sad deficiency from those who for it and sacrifices its all to give it visit them, so when our friends come daily comfort, that holds all menial ofto see us, we put on our best looks, and fices as gracious opportunities for miti on of discomfort and of pain; we With us on the Backwater it is not so; know you now as we have never known there are only days that are less bad you before. Oh, Friendship, whose than the others. What is worse than smile has been always dear to us, but all, some good folks think to raise our of the greatness of whose fond and spirits by the reflection that we may faithful heart we have never guessed, live for months, and even years, longer. forgive us for our former ignorance. Because they are in love with life If even there be no heaven hereafter, themselves, they think that, though in there are angels here. Alas! though some less degree perhaps, it is dear to our gratitude can be told, it can never us also; they cannot conceive a state be shown. There are two words that ring in our ears far more sorrowfully than the warning of the Weir: "Too late! Too late!" We are as dead men, though (thanks to these angelic visitors) not "out of mind." We think, if a miracle were worked and it. They do not understand that one we could "get about again," that we should spend the remainder of our lives in striving to repay them, in doing the like kind offices we have received from them to others in the same sad case as ourselves. There is no harm in having such thoughts, and, alas! no good. of existence in which one's chief hope and constant prayer are to get it ended. Others, from equally kind motives, find another ground of congratulation in the fact that, though the nearness of the Weir is evident, we are not moved by of the saddest conditions to which the human mind can be reduced — not from faith, but from pain and weariness-is no longer to fear the Shadow feared of man. From The Spectator. News is brought us of what is going on in the world -in politics, in literature, and in social life. It interests us FACT AND FICTION. very much, but in quite a different THE world hears a great deal, from fashion from the old one. We are no the crities of fiction, about wild imaglonger actors but spectators, and, as it inings, impossible situations, stories seems to us, at an immense distance that are spoiled by beings far removed from the stage. The performances are, from the plane of human experience, as it were, in another planet. Our vis- and of plots so far-fetched and extravitors, with tender instinct, select only agant as to be utterly absurd. Yet, such topics as are agreeable to us, and strange as it sounds, we believe that strive to conceal from us the reason these complaints are usually ill-founded. that we are too weak for opposition. There are plenty of bad plots and But, alas! we know the reason very foolish situations, but their badness well. A certain morbid sensitiveness and foolishness consist far less often in takes the place of intelligence with us, their impossibility than is popularly and on the other hand is unsuspected. imagined. A man may, of course, sit They are unaware — as, indeed, how down and concoct a monster, but as a could it be otherwise?—that their rule the human imagination is singulightest remarks sometimes distress larly limited and confined. In the reus. They forget when they praise the gion of the human comedy, it seldom weather that we shall never more feel or never travels outside the region of the sunshine, nor breathe the fresh actual experience, while even in the air, nor put foot to the ground again. romance of marvel and adventure, the Again, in their wish to cheer us, they novelist as often as not is only "a little profess to see some improvement in previous," that is, he merely invents our condition, which in fact never and discovers quicker than the legititakes place. The best that happens is mate discoverer. For example, it often that the change for the worse, which happens that the analytical novelist is continuous, is imperceptible. Ordi- produces what he imagines to be a pernary invalids have their "good days." fectly new psychological situation; but a week or two after publication, some | the other way, when Edgar Allan Poe one sends him a cutting from a weekly thought he was inventing an impossible local newspaper, headed "Remarkable new gas which should enable Hans Suicide in Great Snaleby," or "Strange Pfaall to float his balloon, he was Law Case in Hogton Magna," in which merely roughly sketching out in adhis situation is parodied to the life. vance the work to be done in a London The weaver of romance finds it equally laboratory. The Lancet of last Saturhard to beat real life in the way of day quotes the passage from Edgar imagination. His villain's contrivance Allan Poe, in which Hans Pfaall defor getting the hero to dive off a spring-scribes how he produced his new gas, board in the dark into a marble swim- lighter than hydrogen. Here is the ming-bath which has been previously extract : emptied, turns out to have happened in real life except for the villain, while the plan of catching a hundred cobras and collecting their poison is shown to be as old as Cæsar Borgia. In fact, the novelists try to take a new patheter, properly shaped, and ten feet in which will lead to an undiscovered country where no one has ever penetrated before, but find in the end that they are only making a circle, and that in reality there is nothing new under the sun. During the last week or two, there have been published a number of striking instances of the limitations of the imagination. To begin with, there was the strange story told at the trial of the probate action connected with the estate of the late Mr. Theobald. It appeared from the evidence that a very unlikely and far-fetched incident introduced by Mr. Hardy into his novel, "The Hand of Ethelberta," had actually taken place in the house of a member of Parliament. Reality had followed fiction, and a lady who had bettered herself by marriage had actually taken her father and mother into her house as servants, and apparently in the same spirit of strictly regulated affection which was portrayed in the novel. So much for the psychological plagiarism of real life. A still more remarkable instance of imagination being unable to overstep the bounds of the possible, or of reality being obliged to follow fiction, is afforded by the discovery of helium. One might have imagined that when Professor Ramsay discovered a new element in the air, he was out of reach of the novelist. Not a bit of it. Edgar Allan Poe had been there before him. Or if we put it I then took opportunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east of Rotterdam, five iron-bound casks, to contain about fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size; six tin tubes, three inches in diam length; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or semi-metal, which I shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a very these latter materials is a gas never yet common acid. The gas to be formed from generated by any other person than myself, or at least never applied to any similar purpose. I can only venture to say here that it is a constituent of azote, so long considered irreducible, and that its density is about 374 times less than that of hydrogen. It is tasteless, but not odorless; burns, when pure, with a greenish flame; and is instantaneously fatal to animal life. Its full secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing but that it of right belongs (as I have before hinted) to a citizen of Nantz, in France, by whom it was conditionally communicated to myself. The same individual submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through which substance any escape of gas was nearly an impossibility. I found it, however, altogether too expensive, and was not sure, with a coating of gum caoutchouc was not upon the whole, whether cambric muslin equally as good. I mention this circumstance because I think it probable that hereafter the individual in question may attempt a balloon ascension with the novel gas and material I have spoken of, and I do not wish to deprive him of the honor of a very singular invention. It is curious to note that the italics are Poe's own. Yet as the Lancet remarks, they might very well have been theirs at the present juncture." We hope our readers will remark how very - closely the manufacture of helium fol- | mode of sending gold abroad, and to lows Poe's receipt. To begin with, discontinue the use of tugs in its transhelium is prepared by pouring a very port." In other words, a set of men common acid — i.e., sulphuric acid-on of business came to the conclusion "a particular metallic substance or that unless they were careful, there semi-metal" - i.e., clèveite. Next, its might be another example of real life density is probably very much less than plagiarizing fiction. that of hydrogen. Azote is another A common way of explaining the name for nitrogen a zōē, without life. anticipation of reality by fiction, is the Hence, if Hans Pfaall's gas was not natural tendency of mankind to imhelium it was something very like it. itate what they see and hear. It is Curiously enough, the writer in the suggested that life follows fiction as Lancet suggests that helium will be trade the flag. For example, a lady used for the exact purpose for which who has married above her, reads in a its fictional inventor destined it. "If novel of a heroine who, placed much as helium could be obtained in tolerable she is, takes her father and mother into quantity, what an important bearing it her house as servants, and does the might have in aeronautics. Thus, if it same. Again, a clergyman, who has a be much lighter than hydrogen its lift- sceptical but devoted wife, thinks he is ing power would be much greater, and bound to separate himself from her the cumbersome and clumsy dimen- because he has read "John Ward, sions of our present balloon, it is easy Preacher." Lastly, a band of trainto see, could be reduced with very great | robbers stop an express in the Far advantage." Clearly Edgar Allan Poe West exactly in the way suggested in invented helium as much as Jules a Christmas Annual, because one of Verne invented the submarine boat. After this one wonders how long it will be before a projectile is shot on to the moon, or the centre of the earth reached by way of an extinct crater. A less exciting, but none the less remarkable, instance of the inter-penetration of fiction and fact is to be found in the circumstances recorded by Messrs. Cassell in a recent circular. It appears that in his recent novel, "The Sea Wolves," Mr. Max Pemberton dealt with the transport of bullion on the Continent. After a careful study of the modes of transporting gold to Russia, he conceived the idea of an immense amount of bullion being stolen in the course of transit from the tugs to the steamers, and worked out such a scheme in the course of his novel. According to the circular from which we quote, "Certain well-known firms of financiers have noted the story, and recently held searching inquiry with a view to ascertaining whether the methods described in The Sea Wolves' were at all feasible of accomplishment. As a result it appears to have been decided to make a fundamental change in the them has read a notice of the Christmas Annual in the Garfieldopolis Gazette. According to this theory we may also suppose that Professor Ramsay discovered helium by reading the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Unfortunately, however, this easy explanation will not bear looking into. It is as often as not quite obvious from the facts that no sort of imitation was possible in the cases of coincidence between fact and fiction. We do not believe either that Mrs. Theobald had read "The Hand of Ethelberta," or that Professor Ramsay used Poe as his scientific director. The real explanation is to be found much nearer at hand. Fiction is hardly ever wild enough to be beyond the possibility of finding a counterpart in reality, because the human imagination is, as we have said, a very limited thing. Imagination in fiction, at any rate, is a matter of logical building up, not a flight in the blue. We start with a balloon, and then we want to find something which will enable our hero's balloon to be less erratic and more generally useful than the true balloon. This brings us at once to a gas lighter than the gas ordinarily used by aeronauts. But if fied by an occurrence reported from the Soudan, the author is not to be thereby excused. For example, if a novelist made his heroine in the Crimea write a love-letter, catch a crane on the point of migrating, and tie the letter under the bird's wing in the hope that it would be shot by her lover, a captive in Khartoum ; and if the lover had the bird brought to him three months after, and "pressed the scroll to his lips, etc.," we should say "Fudge," and throw the book aside. Yet when Slatin Pasha was a prisoner to the Mahdi, a crane was shot and a letter from south Russia found under its wing, and this letter was brought to Slatin, the only man in the Soudan who could read it. This fact, however, would not have justified the novelist, or altered the verdict of "Fudge." We do not want mere possibilities in fiction, but possibilities that look like possibilities. The novelists, again, must not think that life is imitating them, or that they are prophets. They must instead remem we are to have a new gas, let it be the lightest conceivable, something lighter than hydrogen. How are we to make it? Why, of course, by pouring acid on a metal. But a new gas demands a new metal. Here, then, we have arrived by a perfectly logical process within measurable reach of helium. The man of romance can indeed hardly avoid prophecy if he works in a field so fruitful of new discoveries as chemistry. Suppose a novelist, quick at syllogisms and with a reasonable amount of judgment, and possessed of a smattering of natural science. Let him apply these to the invention of a new element, and in all probability he will be justified by a discovery twenty years hence. The ordinary man is indeed so bound by the syllogistic method of thinking that if he writes sense and grammar, he will hardly be able to set forth an utterly impossible suggestion. Of course if he deals in mysteries which are contradictions in terms, he may soon break away into impossibili-ber with humility how circumscribed a ties. But if he is unmystical in the strict sense of the word, he may be as extravagant as he likes, and yet be only heralding new discoveries or new arrangements in the kaleidoscope of life. It is the same with the aualytical and psychological novelist. His business is to arrange human characteristics and human actions into patterns. But remember that there are some five or six hundred million people who are daily arranged in patterns by Providence. It is almost certain, then, that the novelist will fail to hit on a really new combination, and by no means unlikely that he will hit on one that has been, or will be recorded. Sir Thomas Browne said it was too late to be ambitious. It is certainly too late to be original in fiction. It must not be ties, a still, quiet conscience. — Henry VIII. supposed, however, that because we "THE chancellor of the exchequer think it hardly possible for the novelist acknowledges the receipt of £who writes sense to beat fact, we con-account of income tax, from XYZ." sider that every sort of extravagance is Such an announcement as this is familtolerable in fiction. It is the business iar enough to most readers of the newsof fiction to please, and though an papers; but few persons, perhaps, have "impossible "incident ten years after any notion as to the amount that is rethe date of composition may be justi-ceived in each year by the chancellor of thing is the imagination, when it is not From Chambers' Journal. CONSCIENCE MONEY. I feel within me a peace above all earthly digni — on |