ventilate his opinions and make his mark in the world of thought. There he has the misfortune to fall in love with a fashionable belle, Rose Dewhurst, who, urged by her worldly parents, and, it must be added, by her own worldly instincts, gives this young Highland lover up; a disappointment which, if it does not break his heart, so works upon a naturally delicate constitution, overwrought by study, that he comes back to the old home, and the sister Hester, to whom he has always been a paragon of men (notwithstanding that she had eventually a husband of her own), only to die. Besides these three persons represented, there are but two others, Lady Anne Dewhurst and the Squire, the 'cruel parients' of Miss Rose; and yet out of these five characters enough is made to give life and completeness to the whole poem. It has been objected to this work, as we have hinted, that its picture of fashionable life is too highly coloured, owing to the author's not having studied long enough the living model; whereas, in fact, the very contrary is the case. This part of the book is particularly graphic and life-like, probably from the reasons given above, whereas the descriptions of Hester and of the hero himself are always vague, and sometimes

monotonous.

Who, that is a Scotchman at least, will not acknowledge the fidelity of this sketch of the small northern seaport, seen from Olrig Grange :

Eastward, you saw the glimmer of the sea,
And the white pillar of the light-house tall
Guarding the stormy Ness: a minster church
Loomed with twin steeples high above the smoke
Of a brisk burgh, offspring of the church
And of the sea, and with an old Norse love
Of the salt water, and the house of God,
And letters and adventure.

Here is Thorold's character:

Trained for a priest, for that is still the pride
And high ambition of the Scottish mother,
There was a kind of priestly purity

In him, and a deep undertone of awe
Ran through his gayest fancies, and his heart
Reached out its sympathies, and laid fast hold
On the outcast, the unloving, and alone

I' the world. But being challenged at the door
Of God's high Temple to indue himself
With armour that he had not proved, to clothe
With articles of ready-made Belief
His Faith inquisitive, he rent the Creed
Trying to fit it on, and cast it from him;
Then took it up again, and found it worn
With age, and riddled by the moth, and rotten.
Therefore he trod it under foot, and went
A while with only scant fig-leaves to clothe
His naked spirit, longing after God.
But more for knowledge panting than for faith.
The Priest was left behind; the hope of Glory
Became pursuit of Fame; and yet a light
From heaven kept hovering always over him,
Like twilight from a sun that had
gone down.

A very unusual sort of young gentleman this, it must be owned, and one who, in real life, we fear, might be found a bit of a prig; but still he can unbend upon occasion. The poem opens with a playful rebuke to his sister for keeping him waiting in the porch, when he had proposed an evening walk; and what he complains of at Olrig Grange certainly happens in less remote residences,

and indeed under every roof which is favoured by the presence of the fair sex.

Quick, Hester, quick! the old scarlet cloak
And silken hood are dainty trim
'Mong birch and hazel and lichened rock;
The sun is but a little rim

Above the hill, and twilight dim
Is settling o'er the leaping brook
Where we our summer pleasance took,

When youth was light of heart and limb,
And Life was the dream of a Fairy Book.

Quick! let us spend the gloaming there:
A plague on bonnets, shawls and pins,
And last nice touches of the hair,

That just begin when one begins
To lose his patience! Women's sins
Are not alone the ills they do,
But those that they provoke you to,

While smiling lips and dimpling chins
Wonder what can be the matter with you.

Well, minx! I hope you 're pleased at last :
You've made yourself an angel nice,
And me a brute this half-hour past.

Now, did you ever count the price
When each new grace costs some new vice?
You fondle a curl-my wrath I pet;
You finger a ribbon-I fume and fret;

You'd ruin a husband worse than dice,
Buying your beauty at such a rate.

This is true and humorous; yet it is not the raillery of a young man, but of an old one. It should have been Hester's father who speaks, rather than a brother. Indeed these two young people had never been boy and girl, but at a very early age were serious, learned, and eager in the pursuit of science. Thorold, now on the verge of leaving home for London, recalls their occupations of old, with singular felicity of expres sion:

We turned the glass to moon and stars,
The Pleiads, and the Milky Way,
To Saturn's ring, and fiery Mars,

And Venus haunting close of day:
We bent the glass to watch the play
Of spasm-like life in water-drops;
And where the red stone upward crops
We hammered, eager for a prey
Of moss or fern from the old-world copse.

And O those days beside the sea!

The skerries paved with knotted shells,
The bright pools of anemone,

The star-fish with its fretted cells,
The scudding of the light-foam bells
Along the stretch of rippled strand
Spotted with worms of twisted sand,

The white gulls, and the shining sails,
And the thoughts they all brought from the
Wonder-land!

But all this is but a prelude to his metaphysical outpourings, which, however, at this early period (as is natural) are much more reasonable, and we may add readable, than when he has thought out the riddle of life more entirely to his own

satisfaction.

Can the great God be ought but vague,
Bounded by no horizon, save
What feeble minds create to plague
High Reason with? We madly crave
For definite truth, and make a grave,

Through too much certainty precise, And logical distinction nice,

For all the little Faith we have, Buying clear views at a terrible price.

Too dear, indeed, to part with Faith
For forms of logic about God,
And walk in lucid realms of death,
Whose paths incredible are trod
By no mind living. Faith's abode
Is mystery for evermore.

Its life, to worship and adore,

And meekly bow beneath the rod,
When the day is dark, and the burden sore.
What soft, low notes float everywhere
In the soft glories of the moon!
Soft winds are whispering in the air,
And murmuring waters softly croon
To mossy banks a muffled tune;
Softly a rustling faint is borne
Over the fields of waving corn-

God's still small voice, we drown at noon, Which is everywhere heard in the even and morn.

Poor Hester has not only her metaphysical brother to deal with, but a lover (the Herr Professor, who is supposed to edit this volume), who is also metaphysical; who

Vows that she has too much creed

To have much faith; and daily shocks
Her thought with some mad paradox;
And in the ancient truth who sees
But an old bunch of rusty keys

Hung at the belt of the Orthodox,
To open a dungeon which they call Peace.

In consequence of these unhappy surroundings, Hester grows metaphysical herself in time, and is so greatly given to soliloquy and mist, that it is quite a relief to get on to this portrait of a lady, who has no doubt at all about what she wants, and expresses it without any circumlocution to those about her.

Lady Anne Dewhurst is a confirmed invalidwithout anything particular to make her so-who passes her time on a crimson couch, with a rug of sable, in a bright boudoir in Belgravia.

Beside her, on a table round, inlaid

With precious stones by Roman art designed,
Lay phials, scents, a novel and a Bible,
A pill-box, and a wine-glass, and a book
On the Apocalypse; for she was much
Addicted unto physic and religion,
And her physician had prescribed for her
Jellies and wines and cheerful Literature.
The book on the Apocalypse was writ
By her chosen pastor, and she took the novel
With the dry sherry, and the pills prescribed.
A gorgeous, pious, comfortable life

Of misery she lived; and all the sins
Of all her house, and all the nation's sins,
And all shortcomings of the Church and State,
And all the sins of all the world beside,
Bore as her special cross, confessing them
Vicariously day by day, and then

She comforted her heart, which needed it,
With bric-a-brac and jelly and old wine.

This formidable lady has a word or two to say to her daughter Rose, on the wickedness of encouraging so ineligible an admirer as Thorold, in preference to one Sir Wilfred, who has been chosen for her. The girl has by nature some noble instincts, which the brilliant tares of a gay life have almost

choked, but not entirely so. She still ventures to think for herself occasionally, though never now without regretting it; she has been so long in the world of fashion, that she has at last become of it in spite of herself.

The caged bird sometimes dashed Against the wires, and sometimes sat and pined, But mainly pecked her sugar, and eyed her glass, And trilled her graver thoughts away in song.

Lady Anne begins her sermon by bewailing her own bodily infirmities, the scientific turn that the Squire has taken, and the wickedness of all about her. As for Rose herself, who is giving up Sir Wilfred for this Thorold, Where, as the vulgar say, does she expect to go to?

But you have no religion-none.

It is the heart that's wrong, my dear;
If you had not a heart of stone,

You could not leave me lonely here.-
And men may do who have not clear
Decided views; they go about

Their Clubs, and hear who's in and out

And which is 'Favourite' this year,
And bet, and are dreadfully wicked, no doubt.

But women who have lost their Faith
Are angels who have lost their wings,
And always have a nasty breath
Of chemistry, and horrid things
That go off when a lecturer rings
His bell. But they will not go off';
They take a mission, or a cough;

For men will marry a fool that sings
Sooner than one that has learnt to scoff.

You don't believe me: you go in

For science, culture, common-sense, And think a woman sure to win Because she knows the why and whence, And looks at vermin through a lens : And yet you've seen a score of girls With empty heads, and silly curls,

And laughter light, and judgment dense, Wedded to Marquises, Dukes, and Earls.

You cannot be a hypocrite,

To mumble out a false remorse, And wear a look of prim conceit Only to be the winning horse?—' Of course, you cannot; and of course, I never meant you should. But yet, You might feel true grief and regret

For sin; and could be none the worse For the strawberry leaves in a coronet.

It's grace you need, Rose, to illume

Your darkened nature. What an age Since I have seen you in my room!

Though I have nothing to engage My thoughts, except the sacred page, And that sweet book which is so clear Upon the Beast and his numbered year:

Yet all the while there 's quite a rage For some wonderful Mayfair novel, I hear.

Nay, tell me not you do not care

Although the end of the world were come. It's very wicked to despair;

You should be gentle, patient, dumb,
Thinking that any day the hum

Of myriad angels, saintly crowds,
With rainbow trimmings round their shrouds,
May greet you at a kettle-drum,
Coming in glory among the clouds.

The end of all things, as her Prophet informs her ladyship, is drawing very near, and it is become absolutely necessary for Rose to marry as well as she can, and as quickly.

Last week our Vicar plainly told-
He's a converted Jew, I know-
How seven fine ladies should lay hold
Even on the man that cries 'Old Clo','
To save them in the day of woe;
And proved it from the Prophets clear.
So then I thought I'd ask you, dear-

The poor man looked so shabby and low-
If you knew any Jew of the better class here.

For though all Israel shall be saved,
And all the lost tribes found again,
And all be proper and well behaved,

And all be free from sorrow and pain;
Yet even in heaven, it is quite plain,
As stars with different glory shine,
There shall be people poor and fine,

For perfect order there shall reign:
And one would not like to go over the line.

You did not come to speak of Jews-
They're Charlie's friends, and he can tell;
Nor yet about the Vicar's views

Of millenarian heaven or hell:

My dear, that's hardly spoken well.
But what, then, did you come about?
A call, a lecture, or a rout?

A flower, a beetle, or a shell?
Or a prodigy found in some country lout?

Eh! What say you? That puling boy
With the Scotch brogue and hungry look?
Your genius whom you made a toy

Last winter at your drums, and took
About with you by hook or crook!
Tush, tush! do not like your set;
But what's come of the baronet?
As for the writer of a book,

You're not come quite to the curates yet.

To be sure, the baronet himself has not only a good reputation for gallantry, but he is not so orthodox as could be wished.

He wants to open the Museum
Upon the blessed Sabbath-day;

He wants the bands to play Te Deum
When we should go to church and pray;
It will be masses next, I say;
His views of sin are far from sound,
Eternal punishment, I found,

He will not hear of; and his way
Is altogether on dangerous ground.

But then, woe's me! you're all the same;
All turned from Bible-teaching quite,
All snared in folly, sin, and shame,
And blinded to the only light.
And he at least is of the right
Old blood, and has an income nice,
And never touches cards or dice
Or horses. It's a happy sight,
A man of his rank with a single vice.

This part of the poem is indeed as witty as anything in Don Juan, while it pleads for virtue instead of vice. The mixture of worldliness, and what the poor woman conceives to be religion, in

Lady Anne's character, is most humorously portrayed, while the bitter jests with which her remarks are received by her unhappy daughter, are perfectly natural, although highly unbecoming.

The Prophets say that there shall be
A Highway and a Way: we read
Also of ships upon the sea,

Made of bulrushes; and we need,
Unless you think I'm blind indeed,
Unless I'm blinder than a bat,
No prophet to interpret that,

With a steamboat running at full speed
On the Suez Canal, like a water-rat.

There could not be a clearer sign
That now the end draws near in view,
And that it's Providence' design

To bring deliverance to the Jew,

And break their bonds.-Now, shame on you!
To scoff with your unhallowed wit;
There's almost blasphemy in it :-

I don't mean bonds of I O U,

Such as Charlie gives when he's badly hit.

But wherefore speak of things like these
To things like you, who heed no more
The murmur of prophetic breeze

Than creaking of a rusty door?
You walk along the solemn shore
Washed by the tide of awful doom,
While lights and shadows flash and gloom,
And neither wonder nor adore,

But stamp and 'pshaw' through the drawing-room.

The husband of Lady Anne is an excellent portrait. He fancies he is scientific, and dabbles in all the new 'isms' and 'ologies.'

He thought he thought, and yet he did not think,
But only echoed still the common talk,
As might an empty room. The forehead high
And fiery eye had no reflection in them

To brood and hatch the secret of the world.

But yet he has some chivalry in his nature, and some humour, and dearly loves his only daughter. At first he will not listen to her, when she appeals to him for leave to wed Thorold.

Tush, with your marriage and affiance;
The Medium waits me at the door,
That Pythoness of modern science,
Who brings back Intellect once more
To hear and wonder and adore.
She photographed by electric light
My old grandmother's ghost last night,
The very cap and wig she wore,

While the spirit sat by me there bolt upright.

I did not see Her; but I saw

The portrait like as like could be,
And felt a kind of creeping awe,
And old religion back in me;

A hand was laid upon my knee,
And there was music in the air,
The very song she whiled my care
Away with in my infancy;

And she lives in some kind of a sphere somewhere. The Squire must not be interrupted in his high communings, and bids Rose go to her mother.

She'll give
Excellent counsel in Heaven's name;
Fight worldly wisdom, as I live,
And all in pious phrase and frame.
I wish I knew that little game,

Dewhurst to his sister (who is naturally very wroth with her); his apologies for having loved Rose better than one so tried and true as Hester; the remembrances of their early days together that come crowding in upon him as he lies on his death-bed; his earnest appreciation of her love and

care.

How the old books look bright in gold!
You must have dusted them all day
To keep them so from moth and mould.
Those were school prizes near you; pray,
Give me my Homer, that I may
Smell the old Russia smell once more,
And feel the old Greek torrent pour,

Like plashing waves on shingly bay,

As the King mused, wrathful, along the shore. At last he dies, with all the summer sights and sounds about him that were his joy of old, before Fame tempted him to leave the Grange, and

Hester.

Throw up the window; let me hear

The mellow ouzel once more sing,
The carol of the skylark clear,

The hum of insects on the wing,
The lowing of the kine to bring
The milk-maid singing with her pail,
The tricksy lapwing's far-off wail,

The woodland cushat's murmuring,
And the whish of the pines in the evening gale.

Fain would I carry with me all

Blithe Nature's blended harmony;
The half-notes and the tremulous fall
Of her young voices, and the free
Gush of full-throated melody;
And like a child, I'm loath to go,
And leave the elders to the flow

Of speech and song and memory,
And take me to sleep in the room below.

Olrig Grange is a noteworthy poem; and if less striking in those parts in which, it is probable, the author imagines its strength to lie, shews even there the indisputable marks of Thought.

LIGHT FOR THE MILLION.

EVERY age reveals its own peculiar characteristics in the way of the useful arts it introduces. In the nineteenth century, light was wanted, since industry had made such progress, and people were not content to pass their evenings in the comparative darkness of former centuries. From the large manufactory to the artisan's cottage, from the wigwam which the poor Indian makes of bark, to the mud-cabin of the European peasant, a light of some kind was needed to supersede the smoking torch of ancient days, and throw activity into family life by prolonging the evening. The Argand lamp, the first invention, was only known during the latter part of the last century; gas is of still more recent date. Numbers of unknown inventors have been unceasingly at work improving the mechanism of lamps, in order to escape the costly necessity of burning vegetable oils. These attempts have prepared the way for the mineral or rock oil, but chemical art has only in recent years discovered the way of extracting this precious substance from the schist or slaty formations where it is so abundant. The great number of these natural springs were well known, but science had not shewn the manner

of utilising them. It is to the Americans that belongs the honour of having given the last touches to this discovery. The native aptitude which leads them to seek the useful side in everything, and their feverish but patient activity, which seconds so well this turn of mind, has, on this occasion, been of great service to them and the public at large.

This petroleum or rock-oil had been known from very ancient times, but it is only for the last ten years that it has been brought before public attention. Everything has combined to procure it a great and terrible success. The light it gives out is truly democratic, for it furnishes a splendid flame at a very low price. The introduction it had to the public was accompanied by scenes which were sure to give it an unusual notoriety. Princely fortunes were made in a day, as in the times of the with it for whole weeks; ships were blown up at South Sea Scheme; tracts of country were in flames sea; cargoes were burnt in the docks, and the flames were communicated to the buildings and ships lying alongside; explosions in the heart of large cities, and still more recently, the finest capital of Europe half burnt to the ground, have stirred the imagination of the people in both hemispheres. But the new business increased from day to day, and passed victoriously through a series of violent crises, caused partially by the uncertainties of the then primitive modes of working, and by the fear of fire.

At the present time, the treatment and transport of petroleum are made in a well-arranged and careful manner; and the fictitious companies which sprung up during the oil-fever,' as it was termed, formed by unscrupulous speculators, have given way to serious enterprises conducted with honesty and integrity. In five years, the exportation from the United States has increased from one million to sixty-seven millions of gallons, and in 1867 it was supposed that the final limit was reached, and that foreigners required no more than was then extracted; but in 1868, there was a sudden and fresh demand, when the exportations reached nearly a hundred millions of gallons. At the same time the home consumption in the United States alone has increased to the amount of a third of the total production. There was a large reserve existing in both Europe and America, but to supply the later demand more than 13,000 barrels a day have had plored, both in Canada and in the Valley of Oil to be provided. New territories have been exCreek, the original locality where it was found in such abundance, and which has furnished nearly sufficient mineral oil for the lighting of the whole world. It is now necessary to try other petrolif erous zones, the working of which, being more difficult, has been postponed.

It is not in the scope of this paper to describe the procuring of the oil, which has been done many times previously, but rather to shew how it is refined and prepared for use in lamps. The oil, such as it is found underground, is a liquid, gener ally black, but often with a greenish hue; it is by distillation that the colourless product used for lighting purposes is separated. In Italy, in the Caucasus, and in Ohio, it is met with of an amber colour, sometimes almost white; but the most abur dant, and the only one which can be distilled with advantage, is the black. The Americans have given it many names, such as rock-oil, and British oil,