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means or other these are removed down the river. The ice which fills the gorge in winter, and which grapples with the boulders, has been regarded as the transporting agent. Probably it is so to some extent.

But erosion acts without

ceasing on the abutting points of the boulders, thus withdrawing their support and urging them gradually down the river. Solution also does its portion of the work. That solid matter is carried down is proved by the difference of depth between the Niagara river and Lake Ontario, where the river enters it. The depth falls from seventy-two feet to twenty feet, in consequence of the deposition of solid matter caused by the diminished motion of the river.1

In conclusion, we may say a word regarding the proximate future of Niagara. At the rate of excavation assigned to it by Sir Charles Lyell, namely, a foot a year, five thousand years or so will carry the Horseshoe Fall far higher than Goat Island. As the gorge recedes it will drain, as it has hitherto done, the banks right and left of it, thus leaving a nearly level terrace between Goat Island and the edge of the gorge. Higher up it will totally drain the American branch of the river; the channel of which in due time will become cultivable land. The American Fall will then be transformed into a dry precipice, forming a simple continuation of the cliffy boundary of the Niagara. At the place oc

1 Near the mouth of the gorge at Queenston, the depth, according to the Admiralty Chart, is 180 feet; well within the gorge it is 132 feet.

cupied by the fall at this moment we shall have the gorge enclosing a right angle, a second whirlpool being the consequence of this. To those who visit Niagara a few millenniums hence I leave the verification of this prediction. All that can be said is, that if the causes now in action continue to act, it will prove itself literally true.

The preceding highly instructive map has been reduced from one published in Mr. Hall's Geology of New York. It is based on surveys executed in 1842, by Messrs. Gibson and Evershed. The ragged edge of the American Fall north of Goat Island marks the amount of erosion which it has been able to accomplish while the Horseshoe Fall was cutting its way southward across the end of Goat Island to its present position. The American Fall is 168 feet high, a precipice cut down, not by itself, but by the Horseshoe Fall. The latter in 1842 was 159 feet high, and, as shown by the map, is already turning eastward to excavate its gorge along the centre of the

upper river. P is the apex of the Horseshoe, and T marks the site of the Terrapin Tower, with the promontory adjacent; round which I was conducted by Conroy. Probably since 1842 the Horseshoe has worked back beyond the position here assigned to it. Certainly the promontory at T appeared to me much sharper than it is here shown to be. In view of these considerations the foregoing prediction is merely the prospective statement of a fact requiring no great foresight to anticipate it. JOHN TYNDALL.

63

MY TIME, AND WHAT I'VE DONE WITH IT.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WELCOME HOME.

BY F. C. BURNAND.

of the truth of the proverb about a wise child, it is impossible to tell. I was abashed in his presence, and Aunt

“WHY, Cecil, what a big fellow you've Clym's method did not go far towards grown!"

Had I This was the first I had heard of it, and I did not know exactly how to take the greeting.

It was either admiration or reproof. It certainly did not sound like the former, and it could not, evidently, be intended for the latter. The next minute he added, in a tone of disappointment, "Not quite a man yet though, eh?"

Not quite, certainly. Sir John, I have ascertained, had been accustomed to speak of me during his absence as "My son, sir, who's at home now," -he quite forgot that I was not even out of petticoats,-" will be quite a companion when I return."

He was chagrined to find me a child, and his first salutation was only a complimentary tribute to my size as a child.

Thank goodness, I did not commence by crying. I was very near it, however. I looked down and blushed: I looked up and smiled. I, what my Aunt Clym called, "fiddled" with my fingers, interlacing them in an awkward and nervous fashion.

"Don't do that, Cecil," said Aunt Clym. "Haven't you got anything to zay to your papa?"

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conciliating me. My father, poor man, was disappointed. So was I. Neither put this into words. I seemed to experience a sort of feeling of having been imposed upon, and that this was not at all the father I had been expecting-in fact nothing like him.

After the first greetings were over, and I had come out of it all without crying, I was anxious to get back to the housekeeper's room, where my nurse was; but this was not permitted by my aunt, who seized the opportunity to point out to my father how fond I had become of certain associates, who, she was sure, were leading me astray.

My father heard her to the end gravely, and then observed

"He must go to school at once."

This did surprise me. I do not know why, but such a course had certainly never entered into my head as one which was to be pursued with myself.

"You'd like to go to school?" my father asked me.

I smiled and was silent. Intuitively I felt that he wanted me to say "Yes," and that he would conceive a very low opinion of me were I to reply "No." So I kept the latter to myself, for private communication, subsequently, to Nurse Davis, but I said "Yes" to my father, and thus it happened that almost the first word of any importance that I had had to say to my father, was an untruth.

His manner made me nervous and timid. I was afraid of displeasing him, and he had a way-I saw it in the first five minutes-of knitting his eyebrows, and twitching his nose, which served

to indicate that the slightest contradiction would set him against me.

The Colvins are undoubtedly an excitable family, impulsive and irritable in various degrees. Mrs. Clym was all this and more. She was a woman of stern determination and settled purpose. Not so my father; he represented the Colvin virtues and failings in full. To impulsiveness and irritability, he added vacillation. If you had asked him for his own opinion of himself-and he often quoted himself as an example to be followed on most matters-he would have shown you what a cautious, calculating man he had always been in business, how he had anything but a hot temper, and how he was invariably willing to hear both sides of a case, and to give a calm and impartial judgment, even where his own interests were vitally concerned. He prided himself upon being excessively neat and clean, as indeed he was, and upon his extremely polite and courteous bearing in the society he frequented, where, to do him justice, he was always welcomed, and where he flattered himself on shining as a wit and a bon vivant. That he did flatter himself is certain, as he was neither one nor the other, though with a secret desire to excel in both characters. These are characteristics of the Colvins decidedly; but I fancy I have met others, besides Colvins, who have easily deceived themselves in such matters.

At eight years old I should have liked, in spite of Aunt Clym's presence, to have jumped on my father's knee, and to have asked him all about the strange country whence he had so recently come, and, especially, about the tigers. But such familiarity was out of the question. As we had begun, so we were to go on, and the next thing I had to hear was my good nurse complained of, and scolded, before my father, who, having his rôle given him by his sister, did not dare depart from it, but intimated to Mrs. Davis, that, after Master Cecil had been sent to school, her further services would be dispensed with.

That night my father made his rentrée into society, at a stately party given by

Uncle Clym, who, being heartily glad to see his brother-in-law back again safe and sound, was for an extra bottle in honour of the occasion, after the retirement of the ladies and of the children. When I was brought in to say "goodnight to Papa," I was uncertain about kissing him, a doubt I had always entertained with regard to any gentleman, whether relation or not, to whom I had had, up till then, the honour of having been introduced.

Sir John seemed as confused and as timid as myself, and I believe his brown face coloured slightly, as he turned round to bid me good night, and kiss me. His was a rough chin, and I did not like it. Two or three gentlemen called me to them, and asked me my age, and when I was going to school. This was an unfortunate question, as it started a stout gentleman with a red face on the subject of "rods in pickle," and remembrances of a leather strap, and a peculiar birch rod when he was a boy (I was glad to think that he had suffered, at all events), which so affected my nerves, that, being overtired and rather frightened, I began to cry, not noisily, but breaking into it, and suppressing it, all at one time-two opposite efforts that nearly choked me.

My father was, I saw it at once, considerably pained by my unmanly way of taking what was only meant in jest, but which, not seeing the fun in the same light as the stout red-faced gentleman, I had looked upon as very real and serious earnest, and had thus given way. Biscuits and fruit partially restored my equanimity. I accepted these presents in order to share them at home with Nurse Davis. My father observed that "I wanted to be knocked about a bit, and be among boys," which would have brought on another fit of tears, had not Uncle Clym's butler entered with a fresh bottle, to whose care (the butler's, not the bottle's) I was straightway confided, to be delivered to Nurse Davis, awaiting me in the passage. As I went out I heard Uncle Clym say "Now ten,"-meaning "Now then!"-which I have since learnt is the formula for

the commencement of a jovial evening, the "Up Guards and at 'em" of a convivial commander-in-chief. Jovial that evening might have been for them; not for me.

At home in our lodgings, all our conversation was about school, and of the separation between Nurse Davis and myself; and though I did not understand much about either subject, yet of one thing I felt certain, and this I said as I sobbed on my dear old nurse's bosom, "that I loved her very much, and wished Papa hadn't come to take me away."

Then she hushed me, and set me to say my prayers, ending with "God bless dear Papa this night," which somehow seemed to me unnecessary now, when he had returned safe and sound from among the tigers in India. And thus father and son met, and I fancy that neither of us was the happier for the meeting.

I fell asleep dreaming of the birch, leather strap, and rods in pickle with which that horrid red man had impressed my imagination.

One thing was clear at all events and no dream, namely, that I had come to the end of my play-time, and that, henceforth, school-time was to begin in earnest.

CHAPTER V.

SCHOOL-TIME. GLIDING ONWARDS.

THE Colvin baronetcy had a history, written and illuminated, up to my greatgrandfather's time; who, being a fine old English gentleman of the sportingsquire type, sold the library, sold the venerable portraits, combined with his son to cut off the entail, and finally raised money on everything that was worth a penny. There being at length nothing left to live for, or to live on, he died at Geneva, in the odour of bankruptcy, leaving his debts and difficulties to his son. The Colvins of the Crusades had once more to go to the East; for my grandfather having settled in his own mind that a title was of small use without money, brought his remaining capital into Wingle's firm, started to lead a new life on the Stock Exchange, No. 163.-VOL. XXVIII.

and dedicated his son, my father, to business from his very earliest years with all the enthusiasm of a Hamilcar. Beyond this the old gentleman had no notion of education, and my father was kept so closely at the grindstone by his employers (a lagre mercantile firm, dealing chiefly, I fancy, in silks, with a highly respectable provincial connec tion) as to have hardly any time left for recreation or self-improvement at night.

This firm, Owen Brothers, merchants, had a branch establishment at Shrewsbury; and here my father was sent for, I think, two years, to make himself thoroughly acquainted with all the details of the business. This, it seems, was about the only time he ever resided out of London as long as he remained in England. Later in life he quitted Owen Brothers. He revived the old Colvin, Wingle, and Co. stockbroking firm, and, starting on his own account, went on and prospered.

My father valued his title-reverenced it as something quite apart from himself, and he had determined that "he would give his son," as I have often heard him say, "a first-rate education, sir; and then he'll be fitted for anything." Lacking this himself, he saw what an excellent thing it would be, although he had but very vague notions of how to set about it. He heard of Holyshade College as the first public school where all the nobility sent their sons, and for this place he at once destined his boy. After that would follow one of the two great Universities, and then the Church, or the Bar, as a profession. Business was to be out of the question. Two Colvins were enough for the city, and the time was fast approaching when the woolsack, or the episcopal bench, might be graced by our name.

The

Colvin baronetey was, whatever might be said, something in hand to begin with. The Clyms, my cousins, were to be brought up to business-the Clym business being shipping insurance; and henceforth, from the commencement of my career at the private school, preparatory to Holyshade-I was taught by my father to look down upon the Clyms,

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