from the office, as they vainly endeavoured to reconcile a discrepancy between the numbers on the coach and the way-bill. In intervals of imprecation, the former official would come every minute to thrust parcels under my seat, obliging me to sit with my knees up to my mouth while he did so; or else would stuff packages into the pockets of the coach, till they amounted to the bulk of a couple of extra passengers, grievously encroaching upon the space assigned to the ladies and me.

When at length we had got every receptacle stuffed, and twenty extra things hung on, and all the insides and outsides fitted, and the three horses put into due order for starting by the assistance of porters and bystanders, off our vehicle rolled, or rather swung, along the crowded street. The fearful crowding on the top was shadowed to the insides on the walls of the houses we passed, and we saw our jeopardy in the countenances of the crowd which we left gazing after us. It usually happened that, before we had advanced two hundred yards, the driver stopped, descended, and, after casting a wistful look at the inside, as if he had not known that it was full, proceeded to make a new adjustment of the luggage on the top, in the hope of giving his vehicle a better centre of gravity. Then would be heard interchanges of civilities between him and certain Irish labourers whom he was disturbing in their seats, or possibly the scoldings of old women who considered themselves as disrespectfully treated, or clamours from my friend the nurse-maid, mingled with the screams of her infant charge, and the curses -not loud, but deep-of the old-bachelor gentleman, for his sins placed next her. On renewing our journey, a shoemaker's apprentice would get upon the steps behind, by way of quickening his progress to his work, and set himself to gaze with an alarmed and curious expression at my face, till I begin to think myself something not fit for this world. By and by, the outskirts of the town being reached, my young friend would drop with a farewell shout of defiance. The green fields now beginning to appear, I would turn to contemplate them through the window, but find I could get but the barest glimpses of them through a pair of hobnailed feet, hanging over from the roof. Rather than be reduced to a state of torpid endurance, I would then launch a remark on the long continuance of the east wind to my vis-à-vis, in the hope of leading to a conversation; but the curtness of the response would quickly settle that matter, and leave me no resource but to speculate in my own mind on the probable state of the river I was about to visit, and the amount of fish which I should consequently take.

Suddenly the coach stopped, and the driver, with an air of eager business, pushed into a public-house, where, by the favouring shift of a bit of curtain, I could see him in high confidence with the landlady, partaking leisurely of perhaps his second or third 'morning,' while the passengers sat in a state of patient and becoming solemnity. The reins were meanwhile intrusted to the hands of some stripling, who thought himself justified in playing the whip on the ribs of the skittish leader, which immediately would exhibit such vagaries as drew forth the screams of the old ladies. Our driver would come out, and, resuming his duty in no good-humour, revenge himself upon the three horses, and away we would go rushing at a furious pace down a slope terminating in a turn at

a narrow bridge, by far the most critical part of the journey. We pass without accident, and keeping on at the same pace, soon reach the end of the stage, where a sigh of relief breaks from my lady-comconsulted as to whether there was real danger in the panions. Their stiffness is now at an end, and I am piece of road we had passed. Well, ladies,' said I, I do not think there was more danger in it than one would encounter in a voyage to India.' Then would follow some comments on the evils of drink, which, being of a nature more trite than pointed, I need not repeat.

Willie for so our charioteer was named-left all the business of changing the horses to a couple of ragged stable-boys. Taking a parcel from one of the pockets of the coach, and surveying it with a knowing look, he would dive into the inn, usually followed by one or two of the outsides, who looked, or tried to look, as if they felt a little chilly. Then would the frequent passing to and fro of a dirty serving-girl reveal to house. If we tired of watching these proceedings, us remaining passengers what was going on in the we could turn our observation on the couple of hacks now attached to the coach-for the third was here dispensed with-and recall the apt description of Shakspeare:

In the course of our journey-granting that we overcame the sense of danger-other disagreeables were in store for us. We would feel a trickling sensation about the neck, and discover it to arise from the dripping of wine, beer, or other fluid, from cases of bottles carried on the roof-some one or two of which were sure to be broken in consequence of the driver's visited by a sickening odour from a cod or turbot slung rough way of disposing of them. Sometimes we were on the outside of our open windows, the said fish having perhaps been left two or three days in the coach-office before Willie remembered that he had been commissioned to bring it for a dinner-party. The windows of the coach were seldom whole; and seldom did we fail to get either an ear-ache or a gum-boil from the wind whistling through one of the crannies. It was ludicrous to see invalids going out to Aldburgh in quest of the health to be inhaled with its pure mountain breezes, and frequently commencing their residence there with an addition, incurred by the journey, to their ordinary ailments. I have sometimes been obliged on one of my journeys by this conveyance to sit for half the time holding the door shut by a strap, the ordinary means of closing being out of order. Arrived at length at our destination, our woes could scarcely be said to have ended. Luggage had been left behind or given out at the stopping-places instead of other packages, which had been carefully brought on. Articles of dress belonging to the lady-passengers, and carefully packed by them in bandboxes, were found to have been crushed and wetted irremediably. Sad was it to hear the lamentations of the fair proprietor over had been expected, as it would be extracted from its perhaps a once gay turban in which great triumplis frail case, bearing much the appearance of a bunch of sea-weed.

At times, however, there was a mixture of agreeables in the Aldburgh coach; and I cannot reflect without

for the purpose of looking out; a mummy propriety occupies every passenger; the bell rings, the whistle sounds, and away whisks the monotonous and artificial mass of human beings..

MR CROSSE, THE ELECTRICIAN. MR ANDREW CROSSE was a Somersetshire gentleman, of moderate fortune, who devoted himself with extraordinary zeal to experiments in electricity, and achieved a fame in that department of science. He died in 1855, at the age of seventy-one, and his widow has published a biographical volume regarding him, from which we learn that he was a man of ardent temperament and of singularly upright and truthful nature, with much of that simplicity which so often is seen forming an element of greatness. His old ancestral seat, Fyne Court, and his estate of Broomfield, occupy a retired but beautiful situation on the skirts of the Quantock Hills. He had in the course of time filled his house with electrical apparatus, and even extended it to the trees of his park, securing thereby, as may well be supposed, the alarmed wonder of the countrypeople, and probably inducing better educated neighbours to regard him as a little mad. In reality, he was a philosopher of the rarest stamp, one disposed to pursue nature into her coyest recesses, and wring from her her most mystic secrets, but all for the good of his kind, and in no observable degree for self-glorification. In the early part of his career, Mr Crosse's attention was attracted to the crystals on the roof of a cave in his neighbourhood. He pondered on the laws which regulate the growth of crystals, and felt convinced that it was caused by some peculiar attraction. The idea of electric attraction occurred to him, and, taking home some of the water which dropped from the roof of the cave, he exposed it to the action of a voltaic battery, when, in about ten days, he was rewarded by seeing crystals forming on the negative platinum wire, which proved to be composed of carbonate of lime. When he repeated the experiment in the dark, the result was more quickly attained. Thus Mr Crosse simulated in his laboratory one of the hitherto most mysterious of the processes of nature. He pursued this line of research for nearly thirty years, totally unknown to the world, when in 1836 he was in a manner discovered by the British Association. Being induced to attend the meeting of that body at Bristol, he and his researches became known to Dr Buckland, who took an opportunity of speaking of them, introducing Mr Crosse as a man unconnected with any scientific body,' who had actually made no less than twentyfour minerals and even crystalline quartz.' The audience regarded him with astonishment, and their feelings were wound to a high pitch when they heard himself relate his experiments and their results. He owned to having made crystals of quartz and of arragonite, carbonates of lime, lead, and copper, besides more than twenty other artificial minerals. He considered it possible to make even the diamond, and expressed his belief that every kind of mineral would yet be formed by the ingenuity of man. The meeting got into a state of high excitement about Mr Crosse and his singular electrical operations. Compliments were showered upon him from all quarters; he became the especial lion' of the hour. These demonstrations, novel as they were, affected him not, and before the end of the week, he had slipped away, and was once more buried in his Somersetshire solitude.

A visitor at this time described Mr Crosse as a middle-aged man, of light active figure, intellectual cast of countenance, and the voice and movements of a person enjoying constant health and good spirits. His conversation was of a character entirely his own. 'Particularly striking is Mr Crosse's eloquence, when he tells you the wonders of his favourite science of

electricity, of its mysterious agencies in the natural phenomena of the heavens above, of the earth beneath, and of the waters under the earth; how it rules alike the motions of the planets and the arrangement of atoms; how it broods in the air, rides on the mist, travels with the light, wanders through space, attracts in the aurora, terrifies in the thunder-storm, rules the growth of plants, and shapes all substances, from the fragile crystals of ice to the diamond, which it makes by toil continued for ages in the womb of the solid globe. As he describes to you all these wonders, not imaginations of a dreamer, but realities which he has himself seen and proved, by producing, by the same agent and the same process, only in a lesser degree, the same results, his face is lighted up, his eyes are fixed upon the ceiling, present things seem to have disappeared from him, lost in the greater vividness of ideas which his full mind throngs before him; he pours out his words in an unfailing stream; but though he has a command of epithets, he finds language inadequate to express his conceptions of the might of that mysterious element which, though so very mighty that it could annihilate a world as easily as it lifts a feather, he has summoned from its throne, compelled into his presence, guided with his hand, and made to do his bidding!-thus surpassing the fabled feats of the enchanters of old.'

The visitor entered the philosophical room, which he found sixty feet long, with a lofty arched roof, having been originally built as a music-hall. Here he saw an immense number of jars and gallipots, containing fluids on which electricity was operating for the production of crystals. But,' says he, 'you are startled in the midst of your observations by the smart crackling sound that attends the passage of the electrical spark; you hear also the rumbling of distant thunder. The rain is already plashing in great drops against the glass, and the sound of the passing sparks continues to startle your ear. Your host is in high glee, for a battery of electricity is about to come within his reach a thousandfold more powerful than all those in the room strung together. You follow his hasty steps to the organ-gallery, and curiously approach the spot whence the noise proceeds that has attracted your notice. You see at the window a huge brass conductor, with a discharging rod near it passing into the floor, and from the one nob to the other, sparks are leaping with increasing rapidity and noise, rap, rap, rap-bang, bang, bang. You are afraid to approach near this terrible engine, and well you may; for every spark that passes would kill twenty men at one blow, if they were linked together hand in hand, and the spark sent through the circle. Almost trembling, you note that from this conductor wires pass off without the window, and the electric fluid is conducted harmlessly away. On the instrument itself is inscribed, in large letters, the warning words, "Noli me tangere." Nevertheless, your host does not fear. He approaches as boldly as if the flowing stream of fire were a harmless spark. Armed with his insulated rod, he plays with the mighty power; he directs it where he will; he sends it into his batteries: having charged them thus, he shews you how wire is melted, dissipated in a moment, by its passage; how metals-silver, gold, and tin-are inflamed, and burn like paper, only with most brilliant hues. He shews you a mimic aurora, and a falling-star, and so proves to you the cause of those beautiful phenomena; and then he tells you, that the wires you had noticed as passing from tree to tree round the grounds, were connected with the conductor before you; that they collected the electricity of the atmosphere as it floated by, and brought it into the room in the shape of the sparks that you had witnessed with such awe.'

The crystal-producing operations were the subject of nearly unmixed admiration, and for some months

Mr Crosse stood on the pinnacle of fame as a great and original discoverer in science. People spoke of his making crystals, without either seeing that he in reality only arranged the conditions under which nature did the work, or imagining that such a creative effort as they attributed to him involved any impiety. It was by and by announced, unauthorisedly, that while Mr Crosse was experimenting with some highly caustic solutions, out of contact with atmospheric air, there had appeared, as if gradually growing from specks, between the poles of the voltaic circuit, certain insects of the acarus tribe. Mr Crosse himself made no pretension on the subject; at no time was he ever able to say more than that the insects always appeared under certain conditions, and not otherwise. It was, however, at once assumed that he now set himself forth as having developed animal life from inorganic elements-an idea most odious to both scientific and religious men. Instantly, he was assailed from a thousand quarters. Objections of the nature of pure assumptions were admitted as conclusive that the insects were produced from ova, according to the ordinary rules of nature. Serious, but weak people denounced him as an enemy of religion, though the fact was that Mr Crosse at all times of his life cultivated a pious frame of mind. The lustre that had fallen on his name was dimmed in a moment, and, notwithstanding all his protestations of innocence, it never revived. We have been assured that many honours which would naturally have been bestowed on the discoverer of the crystallising process, were withheld by reason of the unpopularity which arose from the vulgar error regarding the acari.

6

Little liable to be affected by the praise or blame of man, Mr Crosse continued, for the remaining eighteen years of his life, to pursue his experiments. He simulated the making of metallic lodes or veins in clay; he caused the electric fluid to tear pure gold in pieces. He always spoke as feeling life to be too short for what he had to do. The real motto of his laboratory,' says Mrs Crosse, was, "It is better to follow nature blindfold, than art with both eyes open." This expression explains the character of his mind, and the manner in which he sought results. When he walked out, he read, not in the book of man, but in the book of God. His acute powers of observation would reveal to him some peculiarity in the organisation of plants or combination of mineral substances, which often proved the first suggestion for a train of interesting experiments. Mr Crosse ever evinced the most wonderful patience in his scientific arrangements; for months, even for years, he would wait for results, and watch the slow induration of what he hoped might be an agate, or the minute aggregation of crystals, whose slowly developed facets he would carefully note down from time to time. At an early period of his experiments on crystalline formations, he was not unfrequently disappointed, from the fact of his having employed too strong an electric action. He used to say: "You cannot hurry nature;" too rapid an action throws down the substance in an amorphous state; atoms seem only to assume a crystalline form when they have time to arrange themselves in a state of polarisation to the surrounding atoms.'

At another time he wrote: When misfortune oppresses, and the cares of life thicken around us, how delightful is it to retire into the recesses of one's own mind, and plan with a view to carrying out those scientific arrangements, with a humble hope of benefiting our country, improving our own understandings, and finding unspeakable consolation in the study of the boundless works of our Maker! Often have I, when in perfect solitude, sprung up in a burst of school-boy delight at the instant of a successful termination of a tremblingly anticipated result. Not all the applause of the world could repay the real lover of science for the loss of such a moment as this.'

Though Mrs Crosse only attempts to give detached memorials' of her husband, the public owes her large thanks for her task, which certainly preserves for us some conception of a most remarkable man, sure in time to take a high place in the history of science. Her narration is often very animated, and her expressions striking and appropriate. The volume contains many specimens of poetry by her husband. They are far above mediocrity; yet we could have wished that he had never given to the muses any partof that time which might have been so much more worthily bestowed on science.

MUSIC OF THE STREETS AND CELLARS. Ir is an April evening, colder than April evenings were wont to be in our childhood, but still bright and lovely as the young spring ever is. The sea is dancing in a fresh breeze from the south, and glittering with snowy crests of foam; the clear blue sky has here and there a mass of downy cloud resting on its deep azure, and from the esplanade there floats up the hill a sound

always the harbinger of spring and summer hereof street-music. How well in accordance are the sounds with those strange stirrings of memory and melancholy which the early season causes in most of us. We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Most people who have any sympathy with sounds can respond truly to Jessica's assertion, and say:

I am never merry when I hear sweet music; but this softening effect of it is peculiarly felt, we believe, when the strain floats unconfined upon the air, when, as Shelley says,

A strain of sweetest sound
Wraps itself the wind around,

Until the voiceless wind be music too.

There is nothing more touching, in our opinion, than street-music; we can-as the musicians are frequently unseen-divest ourselves, when listening to it, of all thought of the performers, and imagine the sounds to be the airy tongues' of Milton, or the floating, fleeting magic that made Prospero's island

Full of noises,

A strange life theirs must be! such a compound of sweetness and sadness, pleasure and misery; for many of these wanderers have great taste for the art, and much apparent enjoyment in its exercise. Last summer, an Italian boy, who played the harp charmingly, performed upon our lawn for some half-hour or more, and appeared much more gratified by our admiration and understanding of his skill than by the pecuniary recompense of it. What links they are, too, of the present with the past! Thoughts of troubadours and wandering minstrels, of Welsh bards and 'plaided strangers' with their mournful bagpipes, flit through the mind as we listen, and come as awakened echoes of the past. Dreams of Blondel and Rizzio, of 'le petit Lully,' and of many another wandering voice and hand, are brought back by the sounds even now floating on the air. That very melody they play was composed by a plaided stranger of higher grade and of more noble itinerancy; it is the Annie Laurie of poor Findlater.