And instances have been known in which lightning has ascended from the ground to the storm-cloud, instead of following the reverse course. From what depth these ascending lightnings spring, it is impossible to say.

burned. A lady (Arago tells us) had a bracelet fused from her wrist without suffering any injury. And we frequently see in the newspapers accounts of similar escapes. If it is conceded that in these instances the metal has attracted the lightning, it

Whether there is any real ground for this belief in the protecting effects due to seal-skins and snake-skins, is not known; but there can be no doubt that the material and colour of clothing are not without their importance. When the church of Châteauneuf-les-Moutiers was struck by lightning during divine service, two of the officiating priests were severely injured, while a third escaped-who alone wore vestments ornamented with silk. In the same explosion, nine persons were killed, and upwards of eighty injured. But it is noteworthy that several dogs were present in the church, all of which were killed. It has also been observed that dark-coloured animals are more liable to be struck (other circumstances being the same) than the light-coloured. Nay, more; dappled and piebald animals have been struck; and it has been noticed, that after the stroke, the hair on the lighter parts has come off at the slightest touch, while the hair on the darker parts has not been affected at all. It seems probable, therefore, that silk and felt clothing, and thick black cloth, afford a sort of protection, though not a very trustworthy one, to those who wear them.

The notion has long been prevalent that metallic articles should not be worn during a thunderstorm. There can be no doubt that large metallic masses, on or near the person, attract danger. Arago cites a very noteworthy instance of this. On the 21st July 1819, while a thunderstorm was in progress, there were assembled twenty prisoners in the great hall of Biberach Jail. Amongst them stood their chief, who had been condemned to death, and was chained by the waist. A heavy stroke of lightning fell on the prison, and the chief was killed, while his companions escaped.

It is not quite so clear that small metallic articles are sources of danger. The fact, that when persons have been struck, the metallic portions of their attire have been in every case affected by the lightning, affords only a presumption on this point, since it does not follow that these metallic articles have actually attracted the lightning-stroke. Instances in which a metallic object has been struck, while the wearer has escaped, are more to the point, though some will be apt to recognise here a protecting agency rather than the reverse. It is related by Kundmann that a stroke of lightning once struck and fused a brass bodkin worn by a young girl to fasten her hair, and that she was not even

erable to remove from the person all metallic objects, such as watches, chains, bracelets, and rings, when a thunderstorm is in progress. If, on the other hand, it is thought that the lightning, which would in any case have fallen towards a person, has been attracted by the metal he has worn, so as to leave him uninjured, the contrary view must be adopted. Mr Brydone considers that a thin chain attached in the manner of a conductor to some metallic article of attire, would serve in this way as an efficient protection. Our own opinion is, that, in general, metallic articles belonging to the attire are not likely to have any noteworthy influence, but that such influence as they do exert is unfavourable to safety. We may agree with Arago, however, that it is hardly worth while to regard the amount of increased danger occasioned by a watch, a buckle, a chain, pieces of money, wires, pins, or other pieces of metal employed in men or women's apparel.'

Franklin recommends persons who are in houses not protected by lightning-conductors, to avoid the neighbourhood of the fire-place; for the soot within the chimney forms a good conductor of electricity, and lightning has frequently been known to enter a house by the chimney. He also recommends that we should avoid metals, gildings, and mirrors. The safest place, he tells us, is in the middle of a room, unless a chandelier be suspended there.

His next rule is not a very useful one. He recommends that we should avoid contact with the walls or the floor, and points out how this is to be done. We may place ourselves in a hammock suspended by silken cords; or, in the not unlikely absence of such a hammock, we should place ourselves on glass or pitch. Failing these, we may adopt the plan of placing ourselves on several mattresses heaped up in the centre of the room. We do not think that such precautions as these are likely to be commonly adopted during a thunderstorm, nor does it seem necessary or desirable that they should be. We have not even the assurance that they greatly diminish the danger. A stroke of lightning which fell on the barracks of St Maurice at Lille, in 1838, pierced the mattresses of two beds through and through.

That glass is a protection from lightning is an opinion which has been, and perhaps still is, very prevalent; yet there have been many instances tending to prove the contrary. In September 1780, Mr Adair was struck to the ground by lightning, which killed two servants who were standing near him. The glass of the window had not only offered no effective resistance to the lightning, but had been completely pulverised by it, the framework of the window remaining uninjured. Again, in September 1772, lightning pierced through a pane of glass in a window on the ground floor of a house in Padua, making a hole as round as if drilled with an auger.'

It seems to have been established that if a thunderstorm is in progress, a building is in more danger of being struck when many persons are crowded within it, than when few are present.

e

THE LITTLE ORPHANAGE:

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.-CHAPTER I.

In the reign of King Edward II., when a great part of Scotland was in possession of the English, one of the bravest defenders of his country was the Good Lord James of Douglas. So terrible had his name become to the English, that the women used to frighten their children with it, and say to them, when they behaved ill, that they would make the Black Douglas take them. One day, the wife of an English soldier, sitting on the battlements of Roxburgh Castle, then in possession of the invader, sang to the child on her knee:

'Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye;

The Black Douglas shall not get ye.'

'You are not so sure of that,' said a voice close beside her. She felt at the same time a heavy hand with an iron glove laid on her shoulder, and when she looked round, she saw the very Black Douglas she had been singing about-a tall, swarthy, strong man-at her elbow. Other Scots were behind him, for he and his soldiers had scaled a wall of the fortress. The English garrison was quickly overcome, and Roxburgh Castle retaken; but Douglas took the fatherless child and its mother under his special protection.

Five hundred years have elapsed, and a descendant of the Good Lord James picks up the ragged houseless children to place them in a snug little Orphanage on the east coast of Scotland. It is a cold winter day, and a strong wind is blowing. Three children sit round the large fire in the Orphanage kitchen, the window of which looks out upon a flat bare landscape, enlivened with a few patches of snow, which lie in sheltered nooks. Masses of gray cloud indicate rain; and a solitary tree, in front of the house, tosses its leafless branches, and moans like a living thing. The chief articles of furniture in the kitchen are a large deal table; four tall, straight-backed children's chairs, a century old at least; and a Swiss clock on the wall. Teenie, a little girl of nine years, thin,

PRICE 13d.

white, and puny, is drawing on a slate with a decidedly mischievous expression of countenance; while Susan and Rosy, both of whom are only a degree less starved-looking than Teenie, watch her suspiciously. At the table stands Miss Grant, the matron, busily employed in cutting out two little frocks, from some left-off garments of fashionable make which lie before her. A glance at the three orphans is enough to shew that they have not been more than a day or two in the house. They have been washed, it is true, and each one has her short hair tidily combed off her forehead; but Teenie's feet are bare, for the shoes which are ordered from the shoemaker have not yet come home, and Miss Grant has not even had time to buy stockings for her. Susan, a dark-complexioned child, with large black eyes, is ridiculously attired in the richly trimmed dress of a young lady of high degree. What matters it that the frock is 'a world too big' for her-the beggar child looks at the satin-bound frills and pretty buttons which adorn her person, and is happy.

The matron has been too busy arranging household matters and making clothes for the orphans who have just arrived, to be able to teach them, or even to talk much to them; but, to afford them some means of amusing themselves, she has put some slates and slate-pencils, which have been sent to the house, into their hands. Strange to say, the first thing which occurs to them is to draw portraits-caricature portraits-of each other.

'Ye'll no mak me wi' wings, so ye'll no,' screams Susan angrily, trying at the same time to pull the slate out of Teenie's hand.

'I wull, I wull.'

'What is the matter?' cries Miss Grant, laying down her scissors, and wishing with all her heart that gored skirts would go out of fashion, as they are very troublesome to remodel into little frocks. 'She's makin' me wi' wings,' complains Susan through her tears.

'No, I'm no,' says Teenie.

'Yes, ye are; an' I'll mak you wi' wings, so I wull,' is Susan's threat as she proceeds to draw very fast upon her slate.

'But, children, it is no very terrible fate to be drawn with wings,' observes Miss Grant. 'Angels have wings.'

Teenie and Susan stare stupidly at the speaker, but Rosy, who has a fine forehead and expressive eyes, asks: Who's them?'

The matron leaves her cutting and planning a moment to explain. Angels are good spirits who have always lived in heaven.' The rain patters noisily on the window, the rising wind is heard without; Rosy shivers, and draws nearer the fire, and Teenie holds her bare feet up in front of the bars. Heaven is a place,' Miss Grant continues, 'where there is no rain nor cold wind, and where little girls always wear white frocks, and are very happy. Angels may be near us though we don't see them. They are sent to watch over us, and they stand round our beds at night keeping us from harm. Good children, who go to heaven, are sometimes called angels; so if you were always to tell the truth, and never to quarrel, you might be angels yet, and have wings, beautiful ones, far prettier than let me see, what are you familiar with? than those of a pigeon or of a sea-gull. You have seen sea-gulls?'

Ay, oor Wully had one in a basket. It was lame, an' we kep it in the hoos,' answers Teenie.

It is now time to make the supper, and Miss Grant puts away her work, and sets the porridgepot on the fire, while, in order to put an end to strife, for the children are still disposed to quarrel, she sings a song, to which all give some attention. The porridge being made, the three children gather round the supper-table, when Miss Grant, instead of saying grace, sings the doxology, 'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,' after bidding the orphans follow with their voices. This they do in such a manner as to shew they are not altogether devoid of musical taste; but as soon as the singing is over, and they begin to eat their supper, they again become unruly. Remonstrance and rebuke have little effect upon Teenie and Susan, so Miss Grant is glad that it is now time for bed. The orphans are undressed and washed, and left to their repose, and the matron returns to the kitchen, pleased to have two or three hours' quiet for her needle-work. In a few minutes, however, loud sobbing is heard, and Miss Grant runs up-stairs to see what is the matter. It is little Rosy, a child of six, who, remembering what she had been told about celestial beings, is crying: 'I dinna like the angels roun' my bed; I want them to go away. Though I canna see them, I'm feared for them.'

It is in vain that Miss Grant explains that guardian angels are friendly spirits; Rosy objects to ghostly company of any kind, so the matron remains with the child, and sings her to sleep.

Caricature-drawing continues for some time to be the favourite amusement of the orphans, and one day Miss Grant finds that she herself is the subject

of a sketch.

You are no to mak her wi' wings,' cries Rosy, vehemently, to Teenie; I'll no let you mak her wi' wings. You're to mak' her bonny, awfu' bonny.'

Miss Grant is far from handsome, and she has a short square figure. She might, therefore, have objected to a caricature, but she laughingly assures her pupils she has no aversion to being portrayed in angel-form. Rosy, however, draws a lady with an immense crinoline and a chignon-neither of which Miss Grant wears-and holds it up triumph

6

antly before the face of her teacher, as she observes: That's you.'

There is in the minds of the poor people a strong prejudice against the Orphanage. They are afraid of what they do not understand, and any attempt to deprive the 'bairns' of their birthright of dirt, rags, and ignorance is regarded with suspicion. When it is found that the orphans,' as they are usually called, are more obedient and orderly than other girls of the same class, it is assumed-and here the reader may be reminded this sketch is not fictitious-that their good conduct is only produced by unlimited beating, and they are pitied as being under an unnatural degree of restraint. Strange to say, the popular impression, too, is, that the children are starved. If this notion were correct, the writer can only say that they are starved at a considerable expense to the benevolent founder. Indeed, judging from the famished appearance of many of these little ones when they are admitted to the Orphanage, it would require no small amount of ingenuity to place them on a diet more spare than that on which they had previously managed to exist. At the same time it must be admitted that the conduct of some of the children during the first six weeks of their residence in the Orphanage is highly calculated to foster the current opinion. Teenie, for example, finds it very hard to conform to rules. She has an intense love of street-life, and would rather lead a sort of gipsy existence, prowling about the worst parts of the town with low companions, even though cold, wet, and hungry, than submit to authority. Early one morning she is missing from the Orphanage, and it is found that she has run away. After a search of some hours, she is discovered by Bridget an active girl belonging to the town, who has come in to assist in household work-in the squalid cottage of a family whose profanity and dissipation are notorious, out of which she is carried screaming and kicking by Bridget. Teenie is quite aware of the prejudice which exists against the Orphanage, and is cunning enough to go to the window when she is in a naughty temper, and sob and wail there so as to attract the attention of the passersby. In course of time, however, she becomes more reconciled to her new home. The arrival of other children makes the house more lively, and old companions are forgotten.

The Orphanage has been in existence about two months, when there arrives one day a delicate child, who is not intended to remain permanently, but is only sent in the hope that change of air may benefit her health. She is not an orphan, and her parents, who are in humble circumstances, are respectable people. Effie is seven years old, but is small enough to be taken for four. She is slightly dwarfish in appearance, but her shortness of stature is attributable to disease, not natural deformity. The poor child is toothless too, a defect which she explains by the extraordinary statement that her teeth were knocked out by a lady's crinoline. This is corroborated by the little invalid's father, who comes to see her. It is explained that a philanthropic lady, on visiting Effie's mother, overturned with her crinoline a small table, which fell on the face of the child as she was lying on the floor, and knocked out her teeth. Effie is an old-fashioned little thing, and is found to have a curious habit of repeating the remarks of grown people. She takes only a languid interest in dolls and other toys, but