Far

the clouds have crept away, and all the sky shines with a faint rosy glow through the veil of rising vapor; the long grass in the hollows there beside the lake and all the folded flowers in yonder meadows are drinking in the gracious dew. through the stillness comes the voice of many waters of the river leaping down the rocks. Through Macpherson's fancy comes a vision of it sparkling in the glory of a summer day, of himself too walking there, fenced about with davlight and companionship, plovers calling and crying overhead, flowers glowing under foot, merry gnats dancing in the yellow gleams under the alder boughs, light and shadow flying over the fields and flickering among the pools and waterfalls. But now the ghostly mist creeps on and folds it all out of sight, and he is alone.

Mournfully, and yet with what deep longing, it brings to his heart thoughts of that dim night that shall be when the day is past to come no more; of the many morrows that shall dawn and set with their sun and shadow, the many evenings with their tender mist and dew, when he will have nor part nor lot in the beautiful earth save a narrow grave he knows not where. Oh, life, swifter than a weaver's shuttle! vanishing as a dream! Shall he not bear its utmost burden to the end?

Strength and patience came to him beside those quiet graves. Feeling forward into the future he could divine a coming hour when he would be fain to ask a harder trial, longer probation, ere he see the face of the Master he has followed with such faltering feet; that he may suffer a little more for the dear sake of Him whom he has loved so unworthily, ere the day for suffering go by for

evermore.

The next day, having made up his mind to avoid the villa entirely, he sent Mrs. Echalaz a basket of water-lilies from the loch, with a message to the effect that he hoped his long arrears of work might be his excuse for not coming in person.

He only longed now to hear that they were gone, and went in daily fear of meeting some of them. He thought and hoped that his fever of unrest might pass into dull pain when she was gone, a pain he might be able to bear more quietly, NEW SERIES.-VOL. XLI., No. 6

and in time, perhaps, ignore. Hard work was the only anodyne; but he was not very fit yet for all he tried to do, and the sore trouble of his heart weighed down his spirit and sapped his energy in spite of his best efforts, so that even to himself he grew changed and strange.

He was coming home one evening through the birch wood above the loch, about a week after he had left the villa, with weary, lagging steps, and his eyes upon the ground, when the consciousness of another presence, though he heard no sound, made him look up to find himself face to face with Lily standing alone on the narrow path just in front of him. She had been sitting there under the trees and had just risen to her feet; her hands were full of white scented orchis, her hat lay on the ground, and the evening sunlight fell on her fair hair and showed him that her face was paler than when he saw it last -paler and almost, he thought, a little sad. He forgot how his behavior might appear to her; his one idea was to escape, that she might never guess the fatal shipwreck he had made.

His eyes fell directly, and with a few inarticulate words he lifted his hat and stood aside to let her pass. But Lily did not move. Perhaps if he had not looked so very ill, and something more than ill, she might have lacked courage to disregard his gesture; as it was, pity held her there.

Mr. Macpherson," she said, in a low, grieved voice, am I to pass by without a word?'

He could not speak. It was like the last glimpse of light to the prisoner condemned to life-long darkness to have her standing there. How was he to bid her go?

"Miss Echalaz,'' he said, I wanted to spare you-and myslef too—I—I am blind and bewildered-I have been very selfish-perhaps it is wrong now to tell you I don't know-I can't tell-" he stopped, and there was a moment's absolute silence covering wild confusion and conflict in his heart, and then he looked up and the words came, he knew not how, steady and clear, "I love you, Miss Echalaz.' They were scarcely spoken before he was condemning himself again. "Oh! Laugh at meHe laughed too as he spoke, not knowing what he did till he saw her face change and the tears start from her eyes. "Does it seem to you a thing for laughter?" she asked, passionately. "Have you judged me a woman to laugh at the love of the noblest man I know? To hold it so very cheap that you need not even tell me

"

How could I tell you?" he broke out. "What could I offer in exchange for all I would ask you to lay down? Could I ask you to come and live in this wilderness in the barest poverty, where half the year is winter, where there is no -no society, nothing but work and hardship and loneliness?"

pherson at once, and even as he uttered the word it told him what she meant. My love was such a poor thing to offer," he faltered humbly, “and I have nothing else.'

The tears brimmed over in Lily's eyes. "And would you take anything else in exchange?" she said-" would money do instead, or rank, or any other thing?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" he exclaimed, impetuously; "only love, and only yours! Can love-such love as mineoutweigh all the rest?" His voice failed, and as he raised his earnest, searching eyes to her face, the last words came in a hoarse whisper, "Oh, is it enough for me to dare offer you that alone?'

Lily crossed the narrow pathway that divided them, letting all her flowers fall at their feet, and laid her hands in his. Would you really have let me go away without telling me?" she asked, bravely, while the rosy color deepened in her cheeks. 'Less than love, for you and me, is nothing; and more than love there cannot be;" and then she was fain to hide her face and fast-falling tears upon his breast. "Oh, if only I were less unworthy!"

66

Macpherson trembled as he drew her to him. "God bless you, darling!" he murmured, brokenly; and again and again, thinking over the past, she heard him whisper, "Thank God! thank God!"-Leisure Hour.

THIS may be to some of our readers a startling question; for most of us have had that star pointed out to us many years; and perhaps those who directed our eyes to it little thought that there would ever be any other pole-star. It is well known that if the northern extremity of the axis of our earth were lengthened until it met the imaginary sphere of the heavens, it would come very near to our present pole-star, hence called Polaris; and if, for any cause, the direction of that axis were materially altered, that star would no longer be a true index of the north. We now propose to show that such a change of the

direction of the earth's axis is continually taking place; and that the terrestrial axis when thus lengthened describes a cone, the apex of which is the centre of the earth; and the circumference of the base of the cone is a circle described amongst the stars. When the axis has described one-half of its course, the angle between the two positions it occupies at the beginning and at the middle of the rotation is about forty-seven degrees. And thus the extremity of the axis will successively come near to other stars than our present pole-star; and in about twelve thousand years it will have as the Polaris the very conspicu

1885.

ous star Vega, or a in the constellation Lyra.

1

803

rapidity of rotation from a rifled barrel, keeps the direction of its axis without deflection to the right or left. And thus we find that the present position of the earth's axis with respect to the ecliptic is not altered; but the two forces acting upon the earth cause the axis to rotate, as above described, so that the north pole describes a circle in the heavens. But as the period of this rotation is very great, it was not easy to detect such a result, except after a long period of observation. It was discovered thus. The point where the ecliptic and equator cut is called the first point of the constellation Aries, one of the well-known twelve signs of the zodiac. From this point all celestial measurements are made eastwards. Each star of importance has had its distance east of that pointcalled its right ascension-recorded. In the course of time, the tables of these numbers so recorded appeared to be erroneous; but the error was so regular, and all in one direction, that it was conjectured that the point from which these right ascensions were reckoned had itself shifted its place. And so it proved; and if any one looks at a celestial globe, he will see that Aries no longer occupies the position where the equinox is, but is somewhat to the east, or right, because the point of intersection of the ecliptic and equator has slipped back. But as the sun appears to take a shorter time to come back to the equinox than to arrive at the same stars, which were once close to that point of intersection, this slow retrograde motion is termed the precession of the equinoxes. The distance on the equator caused by this retrograde motion would, if not otherwise modified, be 50" 41 annually. But the attraction of the planets on each other produces a very small motion of the equinox in the other direction; and so the resulting precession is about 50"'1 annually. If we divide the three hundred and sixty degrees in every circle by the above small quantity, we shall find that the period of the revolution of the earth's axis is twenty-five thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight years.

We now proceed to explain the reason of this movement of the earth's axis. It is well known that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but is flattened at the poles, being what astronomers call an oblate spheroid. Now, the sun's attraction upon such a spheroidal body is not quite the same as it would be upon a perfect sphere. When the sun is at either equinox-that is, just over the equator-the attraction exercised upon our earth is the same as if that body were spherical; but when the sun is at or near the upper tropic, its action upon the terrestrial matter which bulges at the equator has a tendency to pull that matter towards the ecliptic, and to make the axis of the earth approach to a vertical to the ecliptic. The same influence is at work when the sun is near the lower tropic. And if this influence were not counteracted, the effect would be to cause the ecliptic and equator ultimately to coincide; and our annual succession of seasons would be done away with. But as no such catastrophe is threatening us, and the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator remains about twentythree and a half degrees, there must be some force which neutralises the above tendency this is the rotation of the earth on its own axis. No one but a good mathematician could a priori tell the exact effect of these two forces combined. But any one may see how rotation may effect the motion of a body acted on by another force, by observing how a pegtop is kept upright by the rotation, whilst it falls as the rotation ceases. The influence of this rotation to keep a body from falling may be noticed by any one who carefully observes a spinning coin when about to fall. While the coin spins rapidly, its uppermost part appears as a point. As it falls, the point becomes a small circle, increasing as the rotation slackens. But if the coin be very closely watched, when beginning to fall, it will be seen that the small circle is for a moment diminished, showing that the coin had partially recovered its upright position. This recovery is entirely due to the rotation. Similarly, a bicycle is kept from falling by its horizontal motion; and a conical bullet, which has gained a great

Of course the moon has an influence on the extra mass at the earth's equator, as the sun has, similar in kind, but far less in quantity. This influence would cause the earth's axis to describe very

out of arguments like these of Achilles. It is certain, too, that many of the social and religious institutions of savages (if writers in the English language are to be allowed the use of that word) have been based on the opinion that the spirits of the dead are still active among the living. All this branch of the subject has been exhaustively treated by Mr. Tylor in his Primitive Culture. But I do not observe that Mr. Tylor has paid very much attention to what we may call the actual ghost stories of savages that is, the more or less wellauthenticated cases in which savages have seen the ordinary ghost of modern society. Here, for the purposes of clearness, I will discriminate certain kinds of ghost stories, all of them current among races as low as the Australians, and lower than the Fijians, all of them current, too, in contemporary European civilisation. First, let us place the well-known savage belief that the spirits of the dead reappear in the form of the lower animals often of that animal which is the totem or ancestral friend and guardian of the kinship. This kind of ghost story one seldom or never hears in drawing-rooms, but it is the prevalent and fashionable kind among the peasantry for example, in Shropshire. In the second class, we may reckon the more or less professional ghosts that appear obedient to the medium's or conjurer's command at séances. These spirits, which come" when you do call them,' behave in much the same manner, and perform the same sorts of antics or miracles, in Australian gunyehs, in Maori pahs, and at the exhibition of Mr. Sludge, or of the esoteric Buddhists. Thirdly, we arrange the non-professional ghost, which does not come at the magician's call, but appears unexpected, and apparently irresponsible. This sort also haunts houses and forests; other members of the species manifest themselves at the moment of death, or become visible for the purpose of warning friends of their own approaching decease. Such phenomena as a sudden flash of supernatural light, or the presence of a white bird, or other ghostly creatures prophesying death, may perhaps be allotted to this class of apparitions.

These things are as well known to contemporary savages a they were to the

classical people of Lucian's day, or as they are, doubtless, to the secretaries of the Society for Psychical Research. Once more, we ought to notice the "well - authenticated'' modern ghost story, which on examination proves to be really a parallel to the William Tell myth, and to recur in many ages, always attached to different hames, and provid ed with fresh properties. To look into these ghost stories cannot be wholly idle. Apparently there is either some internal groundwork of fact at the bottom of a belief which savages share with Fellows of the Royal Society, or liability to certain recurring hallucinations must be inherited by civilised man from his untutored ancestors, or the mythopoeic faculty, to use no harder term, is common to all stages of culture. As to habits of hasty inference and false reasoning, these, of course, were bequeathed to us by our pre-scientific parents, and these, with our own vain hopes and foolish fears, afford the stuff for most ghosts and ghost stories. The whole topic, in the meanwhile, has only been touched at either end, so to speak. The anthropologists have established their own theory of the origin of a belief in ghosts, without asking whether the actual appearance of apparitions may not have helped to start or confirm that belief. The friends of psychical research have collected modern stories of the actual appearance of apparitions without paying much attention, as far as I am aware, to their parallels among the most backward races, or to their mediæval and classical variants.

It is not necessary to occupy much space with the savage and modern ghosts of men that reappear in the guise of the lower animals. Among savages, who believe themselves to be descended from beasts, nothing can be more natural than the hypothesis that the souls revert to bestial shapes. The Zulus say their ancestors were serpents, and in harmless serpents they recognise the dead friend or kinsman returning to the family kraal. The Indian tribes of North-Western America claim descent from various creatures, and under the shape of these creatures their dead reappear. The lack of distinction, in the savage mind, between man and beast makes ghost stories of t

WE seem to need a name for a new branch of the science of Man, the Comparative Study of Ghost Stories. Neither sciology, from σklá, nor idolology, from εidwλov, appears a very convenient term, and as the science is yet in its infancy, perhaps it may go unnamed, for the time, like a colt before it has won its maiden race. But, though nameless, the researches which I wish to introduce are by no means lacking in curious interest. It may be objected that the comparative study of ghost stories is already well known, and practised by two very different sets of inquirers, anthropologists and the Society for Psychical Research; but neither Mr. Tylor and Mr. Herbert Spencer nor those about" Mr. Gurney and Mr. Myers work, as it seems to me, exactly on the topics and in the manner which I wish to indicate. Mr. Herbert Spencer, as we all know, traces religion to the belief in and worship of the ghosts of ancestors. Mr. Tylor, again, has learnedly examined the probable origin of the belief in ghosts, deriving that belief

from the phenomena of dreams, of fainting, of shadows, of visions induced by hunger or by narcotics, and of death. To state Mr. Tylor's theory briefly, and by way of an example, men reasoned themselves into a theory of ghosts after the manner of Achilles in the Iliad (xxiii. 70-110). The unburied Patroclus appeared to his friend in a dream, and passed away, And Achilles sprang up marvelling, and smote his hands together, and spake a word of woe: 'Ay me, there remaineth then even in the house of Hades a spirit and phantom of the dead, albeit the life be not anywise. therein; for all night long hath the spirit of hapless Patroclus stood over me, wailing and making moan, and charged me everything that I should do, and wondrous like his living self it seemed.'

Here we find Achilles in the moment of inferring from his dream the actual existence of a spirit surviving the death of the body. No doubt a belief in ghosts might well have been developed by early thinkers, as Mr. Tylor holds,