out for stuffed crocodiles, witches' fingers, and such "fixings" as became the study of an astrologer, eagerly snapped it up. Have we not all blushed to hear how bishops, archdeacons, canons, marchionesses, and ladies of title without end, invited Zadkiel to call upon them with his magic ball, and tell them what was being done thousands of miles away, what would be done thousands of years to come, and what was done anywhere or any time ago? Those fine ladies and gentlemen "moving in society" pretended to invite the astrologer to show his crystal sphere only as a scientific curiosity; but this explanation imposed upon no one, and the country indulged for a moment in a spasm of wonder at the discovery of this belief in the supernatural on the part of the aristocracy.

Well may the philosopher, peeping from the loopholes of retreat, inquire what advantages the favoured of the land possess over the simple peasant, and scornfully ask if station, birth, and opportunities are of no more avail than to plunge their possessors into a darkness only different in kind to that which possesses the clodhoppers of the fields. The lady who believes that some spiritual essence, beyond earthly comprehension, streams at the ends of the languishing young curate's fingers, as he makes his mesmeric. passes, would laugh immoderately at the idea that old Gammer Gurton could "make the colt go home," or that she could track, with a fiery dog, the object of her dislike. Yet, what is there more absurd in the one belief than in the other? Why should we con

demn Betty Smith because she pretended that she had seen Old Dame Switchem talking to her familiars in the shape of mice (vide Times), whilst we have nothing but interest and sympathy for a crowned head, who pretends—or at least whose hysterical folly leads her to believe that the future is to her unveiled, and that she can look into futurity through the instrumentality of a magic mirror?-or for high-bred ladies who would hide their superstition, when it is made known to all the world, under the specious pretence of mere scientific curiosity?

Truly, if we try the social scale from top to bottom, we shall find that the love of the marvellous is confined to no degree or station of life. If we may claim any exemption at all, it must be for scientific men. It is rarely that we find that those well but not exclusively versed in the physical sciences fall dupes to the enormous impostures which we see every day prostrating the ill-trained intellects of fashionable society. Before the simple scientific rebuke of Faraday, table-turning fell dead at once. In every circle we find and that scientific man scientific a generally, raising his voice against every new delusion which, like swallows at the coming of spring, seem to be thronging of late years upon us.

man,

The conclusion we draw from this fact is, that, in any new scheme of education which may be promulgated for the benefit of the people, and for the especial punishment of quacks of all kinds-witches, spiritrappers, and magic-mirror workers included, a large share of physical science should be insisted upon.

a

It is wonderful how ghosts and spirits of all kinds disappear when tried by any chemical tests, and what sore trial the inductive philosophy is to all mysticism whatsoever, and especially that feeblest of all mysticism which exerts such an influence over the many feeble brains "moving in society."

THE CLERK OF THE WEATHER.

IT is a very common thing to hear the name of the Clerk of the Weather Office taken in vain. That individual has hitherto been a myth, against whom the objurgations of Englishmen have been levelled time out of mind. If a fine day is desired, a jocular appeal is made to the kind interference of this ideal personage; but, as we well know, the joke of to-day becomes the fact of to-morrow; and I have actually seen and conversed with this very myth. If the lounger is on his way to the Abbey, as he gets towards the end of Whitehall, he sees before him, on his left hand, looking down King Street, an overhanging bow window: here is the den or cave of the magician who takes under his care the four winds, and foretells rain or snow with certainty. Do you wish, good reader, to be introduced into this sanctum, which your imagination furnishes with a stuffed alligator, a furnace, a still, and a venerable old man in a fur robe and a conical cap, poring over a large book filled with geometrical drawings-à la Zadkiel; if so, prepare for something much more prosaic.

What is this on the door-some abracadabra? No, simply "The Meteorological Office of the Board of Trade." I ask for the Clerk of the Weather; the porter stares, and asks me if I wish to see Admiral Fitzroy? It must be the Flying Dutchman, I inwardly cogitate, and he must be weather-wise by this time. But the necromancers have grown singularly matterof-fact and unpicturesque. Here are an ordinary office and hall-porters, and ordinary clerks at work as I pass, and ultimately the wind and weather den, or cave, is reached, in which a beneficent Prospero, if he does not conjure up, at least foretells all the winds that blow about our island; and our Prospero is-Admiral Fitzroy.

When we remember the mighty argosies Britain has at sea, the army of sailors that tread the salt ooze, the fearful wrecks that strew our shores, the imagination is excited to ascertain by what means he forewarns and forearms man against such fearful vicissitudes. What is the machinery by which the ship about to sail is suddenly arrested and returned to port? by what occult knowledge is the hardy fisherman forewarned to beach his boat, and to hang up his unused nets to dry? Admiral Fitzroy is no necromancer; but the results he works out are more wonderful than even the Professors of the Black Art have ever offered us. His office and its inner rooms are furnished with nothing terrific to see: there are some self-registering barometers hung side by side, a few Aneroids and thermometers, and some stormglasses, up which the crystal tree I perceive is rapidly