laudari a laudatis principle, he may well be proud of the exalted rank awarded him among the first men of science throughout the world. No one conversant with Continental scientific literature can fail to be struck with the high encomiums lavished upon him by writers who are themselves of the highest standing. To rare skill in reading the Book of Nature, Professor Tyndall adds a power of expounding its mysteries to the uninitiated-a gift still more rarely combined with profound scientific knowledge. His faculty, so early developed, of bringing before his mind's eye vivid conceptions of things not present to bodily sight, his mathematical training, which gives him a precision of thought denied to his great predecessor, Faraday, and last, not least, his youthful eagerness in the study of English grammar, which, as he said in his address to the students at University College, was to his young mind " a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight," have combined to give his scientific expositions a luminous transparency which brings the most subtle conceptions within the range of popular and youthful comprehension. Nor are his lectures without literary graces, which render them as attractive as they are instructive. Fully alive to the fact that human nature does not consist in intellect alone, he studies to please as well as inform, and with animated eloquence strives, not without effect, to inspire his hearers and readers with something of that enthusiastic (devotion to truth for which he is so pre-eminently remarkable. As fearless in the assertion of what he believes to be truth as he is eager in its pursuit, Professor Tyndall shrinks not from openly avowing his convictions, however unpopular, supporting them with an argumentative ability for which he is no doubt partly indebted to the controversial habits of thought formed by intercourse with his father, and strengthened by frequent debates, in which, as he tells us, he sometimes took the Protestant side, and at other times, with startling success, the Catholic side. By his "free handling" of subjects lying in the disputable borderland between science and religion, he has provoked bitter hostilities. Some of the attacks made upon him after his address before the British Association at Belfast were simply ferocious. These he ignored. The nobler and more argumentative assailants, among whom Dr. Martineau deserves special mention, he sought to answer in a firm and dignified manner, in two articles, which have been republished in the last edition of his Fragments of Science." But hostility in this world has not been his only meed, for few have enjoyed more fully than he has the unswerving friendship of great and good men. Professor Tyndall was married on the 29th of February last, to Louisa Charlotte, eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Claude Hamilton; the ceremony being performed by Dean Stanley, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster Abbey. On the occasion of his marriage, a Silver Salver, together with the sum of three hundred guineas, was presented to their Professor, by Members of the Royal Institution; it having been decided "that the amount of the contributions should not exceed one guinea each." IN THE MIDNIGHT. BY LADY WILDE. READ me a tale to-night, my Love, With thy voice so soft and low, For my heart as charmedly waits for the sound, As the earth for the falling snow. Yet, not from the pages of classic lore Of the mighty heroes of old, Tho' their deeds of glory were fitly shrined In Darius' casket of gold: Nor of Chiefs and Vikings who drained the mead To the gods in their lordly halls; Nor of knightly calvacades sweeping by A leagured city's walls: Nor yet would I aught from the tragic muse For on every line some passion or crime Nor of human sorrow or human love, Such memories fall on the heart like fire And I long for the gentle rain. But read to me words that will bring me peace, For my soul like a dove would flee away Some verse from the holy and sacred Book, That saith unto sin-I condemn thee not, Yet read to me not from the ancient Law On the mumuring lip and the hearts that pined Nor yet of the shuddering, bitter cry Borne on the midnight blast, When the Angel of Death through Egypt's land Through Arabia's burning land, For it mirrors our life-that deadly strife And take me not up to Sinai's mount And the bright Shechinah illumed the skies For I shrink from the glare of the prophet's eyes, Denouncing the wrath divine On those who lavished their costliest gifts To build up an idol's shrine. But read me the words of the loved Saint John, That draws the soul to the fount of light Read of the Vine whose branches we are, Read, till the holy and blessed words As the Hebrew's by Babel's stream. THE SHADOW ON THE WALL. BY E. J. CURTIS. AUTHOR OF "A SONG IN THE TWILIGHT," AND "KATHLEEN'S REVENGE. ' CHAPTER I. PART II. THE quiet autumn of my life has come, THORNDALE LODGE, generally called The Lodge, situated within walking distance of the pretty old Cathedral town of W--, had been for years in the possession of maiden ladies. I do not mean that maiden ladies had always lived at The Lodge, but they had been the owners thereof, had received rent for it, and had bequeathed it to other lady relatives, who either were "old maids," or who became so in due course; and who continued to let the house and grounds to desirable tenants, and lived themselves elsewhere. But upon one occasion, some years before this part of my story opens, one of these desirable tenants having departed, The Lodge was not, as usual, advertised "To Let," and rumour said-and oddly enough said truly-that the maiden lady to whom it at present belonged, was about to live in it herself. The people in W who called upon strangers, and who gave parties, and gossipped about their neighbours, began to wonder what Miss Russel was like, and to hope that she would prove an acquisition. "She can't be very young, you know, my dear, when she can live by herself." The owner of Thorndale Lodge had always, I may here remark, been looked upon as a myth, a person who had a name, but not a personality. Miss Russel was not, strictly speaking, young. You, my readers, have met her before, when she was young, and when her home was with her maiden aunt, Miss Heathcote, in C. To that aunt she owed the possession of Thorndale. The twenty years which have elapsed since we met her last, have dealt kindly with Miss Russel. She had not grown stouter or slighter. Her hair was rich and abundant, but her complexion was not so clear, or so brilliant as of old. Her dress was always handsome, but dark in colour, and although she had not the scanty pinched appearance which so often stamps the old maid, neither did she attempt the fashionable shapes and trimmings suitable only to youth. In short, she had grown old gracefully. How few women could say so much. She had such a bright, happy ex pression too, that one would instinctively turn to her for sympathy in trouble, and the trust would not be misplaced, for Eleanor Russel was essentially a comforter. She had had no crushing sorrow to bear, yet perhaps if all the secret places of her memory were opened it would be found that her life had not been utterly without trial and disappointment. But she had not only outlived but had overlived all such crosses, and had neither grown morbid nor cynical. And is not a woman so situated, especially when her means are sufficient to make her quite independent, far happier what may be called "alone in the world," than if she had married, perhaps without much affection for her husband, but only from a weak dread of being called an "old maid." Miss Russel had laid aside the trammels of girlhood. She could do what pleased her unquestioned; she was sufficiently attractive from her charm of manner and her agreeable conversation to be sought out as a companion by men, and she was, fortunately for herself, too old to be accused of "setting her cap" at the best catch among them. Is not such a life far more enviable for a woman than are the lives of some of those "matrons" whom we see around us in hundreds? Girls who have married for "love" on small means, and whose lives are a daily struggle, and whose affection for their husbands, although it may not fly out of the window according to the old adage, loses all its delicate refinement, its poetry, and romance. It was very nice to be petted, and made much of by Jack, or Tom, or Harry in the courting days, but after the second cradle and the first perambulator have been bought, poor Mrs. J., or T., or H. is too much taken up with that absorbing question, "What is to be done with the cold mutton ?" to have either time or inclination for mooning. Miss Russel made some kind friends and pleasant acquaintances before she had been very long living at The Lodge. W- was decidedly a social place. It was a garrison as well as a cathedral town, so that the "prunes and prisms" of the clerical set were diluted and counterbalanced by the verve and dash of the military set, and as the former was not too proper to allow itself to be acted upon by the latter, the result was upon the whole satisfactory. W was a popular quarter, for everyone for everyone called upon the officers, from the bishop down to the lowest of the minor canons; to say nothing of the resident gentry who were rich enough to keep handsome houses in the fashionable part of the old town, and country houses to which they migrated the beginning of June, and left again early in November. And every one entertained; again beginning with the Bishop-he had two pretty daughters, grown up-who gave in winter large dinner parties à la Russe, which were rather heavy, and in summer garden parties, which were decidedly light, and which began with croquet, and ended with a "severe tea" and music. The entertainments given by the minor canons were stupid little affairs, at which the people stared at each other, and played bezique. The resident gentry were the people who really did entertain. In summer they got up pic-nics, and had croquet and archery parties, ending with a dance; and in winter, charades and charming balls, at which the Misses Bishop, and the daughters of The Very Rev. the Dean, and the Precentor's sisters, and the Chancellor's nieces all danced away with the gallant "sons of Mars," just as if they |