unemployed, and at such times she wisely shunned solitude, as a fit of musing was generally succeeded by a fit of weeping. One afternoon, a day or two before Clara's expected return, Mrs Bertram having fallen asleep, Harriette took the opportunity to go into the garden to gather a bouquet, and snatch a breath of the fresh air. Neither Susan nor Mr Hartley was at home, having taken advantage of the fine day to pay a round of visits.

The flower-garden at Sandilands Hall was a very pretty one. It branched off from the lawn, from which it was only separated by a low wire-fence covered with fuchsias and China roses, and was sheltered on the north by a row of lime-trees, through which walks led into a wood behind. A pretty conservatory stood on a sort of terrace, while beds of beautiful flowers were separated by walks bordered by hollyhocks and dahlias, which formed miniature avenues in every direction. The trees were in their autumn glory. There was no scarlet mountain ash, no purple heather, no long fern, as at Harriette's home; but elm and ash, and chestnut and oak, such as Scotland never saw, stretched away before her in rich and variegated luxuriance, while the sun setting red in the west threw an additional splendour over their melancholy pomp. Away, far along the horizon stretched the sea, bright, and calm, and cold, and blue. There was a clearness and a brightness about everything which seemed almost spiritual, but was the reverse of joyous. Harriette sat down ou a garden seat, and fell into a reverie. The strange sadness which like a spell mingled with the sunshine, and brooded over the beauty, reminded her of the sadness which had come over her fading youth and once gay spirits. The temptation to muse over the past was too strong to be resisted; and Harriette recalled image after image, and feeling after feeling, till it all rose before her a perfect picture; and then, as she remembered that the vision she had conjured up was but a vision after all, she felt the tears rush to her eyes. Reproaching herself for her weakness and folly, she started up quickly for the purpose of returning to the house. She had not proceeded many steps when she heard some one pronounce her name, and turning round, was surprised and confused to perceive that it was Arthur Clavering. She stammered, and said something about not having expected him.

'I hope I have not intruded. The servant told me that your sister and Mr Hartley were not at home, but that I should find you in the garden.' He had come voluntarily to seek her then. More surprised than ever, but in a degree recovering her self-possession, she replied: 'Oh no; not at all. I am going to gather a bouquet.'

'May I help you?'

'Thank you.' IIarriette knew not what to make of all this, and she feared to speak lest she should betray her surprise and agitation. What could possibly be the meaning of the change which had come over Arthur Clavering-and why was he here?

After having given her several flowers of different kinds, he gathered at last a sprig of rosemary, and presenting it to her with greater discomposure and awkwardness than she had ever seen him display, he quoted part of Ophelia's speech: 'There's rosemary; that's for remembrance.'

Harriette, we have said, had learned in a great measure to control her feelings, but at this moment she was not mistress of herself, and exclaimed,

in her natural spontaneous and unguarded manner: 'Rather give me something which means forgetfulness.'

He looked at her inquiringly. 'Surely, Miss Bertram, there can be no part of your past so painful that you should wish to forget it altogether. It is I, not you, the burden of whose song should be "Teach me to forget.' This last sentence was spoken in a low voice. Harriette was more than amazed. If his words had any meaning at all, they meant something very different from anything she had ever expected to hear from the lips of Arthur Clavering. There was a silence of some seconds. 'Do you remember the walks, Miss Bertram, we used to take long ago over the hill among the long heather to the heronry ?'

Harriette's heart swelled: she had been thinking of them a few minutes before. She felt ready to weep, but she answered calmly: 'Yes; that was a very nice walk, and the weather was fine, if I remember rightly.' An expression of pain and disappointment passed over Clavering's features. He turned away almost angrily. Harriette remarked in a tone of assumed carelessness: 'Clara, I suppose, is to be home to-morrow?'

Arthur Clavering started. 'Clara!' he exclaimed, as if some forgotten idea had suddenly recurred to him. 'You do not know then-indeed how could you?—Clara is married!'

'Married!' Harriette almost screamed.

'Yes; she was married two days ago to Charles Crawford!' Harriette looked up in amazement. Arthur continued in an accelerated tone: 'Perhaps you are surprised that I am not in despair at her desertion; but Clara read me more truly. Clara has set me free-free at least to wish.' He looked at Harriette. The blood mounted to her temples; she trembled all over. He spoke again. 'Harriette, when I asked Clara to marry me, I believed I loved her, I believed I had forgotten; but the presence of the only woman I ever really loved dispelled the illusion. Harriette, my only love, I am free to offer you again the heart and hand you once rejected. Should you should you reject them again—oh, I beseech you, do it less unkindly!' and his voice as he finished speaking sank into a passionate whisper. Harriette had been standing for some time with her face towards the sea, looking on it, on the blue sky, on the gay flowers, and the bright tinted woods, as if all around her was some unearthly dream called up by the reminiscences in which she had been indulging. Could it be that Arthur Clavering stood by her side once more?—that he asked her love?—that no barrier lay between them? She turned round. His eyes sought hers. He had resolved to learn his fate at once, and to bear it; and with the anxious, impassioned glance of the lover was mingled the stern fortitude of the man prepared for disappointment. Harriette was a woman, and a proud one—but she was not so strong. All impulses of soul and sense' had swept upon her heart like a tempest; and if Arthur had not caught her in his arms she would have fallen to the ground. It was with a burst of hysterical tears, as she leaned her head upon his shoulder, that the rash reply she had given to his former suit was withdrawn.

Great was the amazement of the circle at Sandilands Hall at the news which awaited them. Mrs Hartley's indignation by degrees became sub

dued into a sort of compassionate consciousness of the necessity of teaching Clara how to manage her house. Mr Hartley remarked that if Clara and her husband never did anything better, they would probably never do anything worse than play at cat's cradle, and thump upon the piano. All were much pleased at the prospect of the approaching marriage, and poor Mrs Bertram declared that all she now wished was to return to Fernielee. In due course of time Arthur Clavering received a letter from Mr Bertram, containing an answer to one he had written soliciting his consent to his marriage with his daughter. This letter Arthur declared to be very satisfactory; but he never shewed it to any one, not even to Harriette.

Mrs Bertram's wish was granted: she lived to return to Fernielee, and then sank gradually, and died in the arms of her weak husband, whom the solemn scene appeared for the time to elevate as well as subdue. The third day after her mother's death Harriette sat alone in the embrasurc of one of the drawing-room windows. It was a grim November day; the hills were shrouded in a cold gray mist, which crept ever nearer and nearer, gradually obliterating tree, and shrub, and stream, and even the lawn itself, till all between earth and sky was a blank and a desolation. Life, too, seemed blank and desolate; and Harriette wept in loneliness of heart as she remembered that she had now no mother to comfort her. Suddenly she became aware that she was not alone. Arthur Clavering had silently seated himself beside her: his manner was grave, but full of tenderness. 'Why do you weep alone, my Harriette?' he said. 'Ought not the severing of one tie to make us cling more closely to those which remain?' As he spoke he drew her gently towards him, and laid her head upon his breast. Harriette felt that to weep there was consolation and happiness.

CHILDHOOD OF EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY.

THE THE philosophy of the present day wears a pre-eminently prospective character. Its dealings are more with the future than with the past. Its title is onward, its character progressive, its aspirations are for to-morrow rather than for to-day. A very little acquaintance with the temper of the philosophic mind of our time teaches us this; and such is in truth the natural consequence of events. Men are not satisfied with their present attainments, and the eye of the scientific is ever on the stretch— gazing into the clouded futurity. Every fresh disclosure of the beforehidden wonders of the natural world is an incentive to fresh investigation. Science is ever adding to the height of her watch-tower, and as she stands upon a higher point of observation, is ever revealing some new and hitherto unknown object for inquiry. It might be thought that the development of natural knowledge-for such is the object of science-would leave continually less and less for discovery. The marvel is, that it is precisely the reverse. Because we know, we come to know more; and the more we come to know, the more remains to be known. Our philosophers are not men who stop to comment upon what is past, or who are satisfied with what is present. They are men who stretch towards things before them, and whose sympathies are all in one direction, and that of advance. Do we ask why? Then the reply must be, because philosophy has ceased to be a system of abstractions and speculations; because it is inductive and experimental. These very terms imply progress. No man can be an experimenter and not advance, provided that his experiments are based upon sound principles, and have a right object in view. And experiment leads to induction, and induction anew to experiment, and both to progress. While such is the character of the scientific mind, it is little to be expected that it will patiently sit down to the study of things gone by. There was a time when philosophy consisted in little else than a blind system of adoration for antiquity. After the first great achievements,' to quote the just and elegant language of Professor Whewell, 'of the founders of sound speculation, in the different departments of human knowledge, had attracted the interest and admiration which those who became acquainted with them could not but give to them, there appeared a disposition among men to lean on the authority of some of these teachers; to study the opinions of others as the only mode of forming their own; to read nature through books; to attend to what had been already thought and said, rather than to what

really is and happens. This tendency of men's minds gave a peculiar bias and direction to the intellectual activity of many centuries; and the kind of labour with which speculative men were occupied in consequence of this bias took the place of that examination of realities which must be their employment in order that real knowledge may make any decided progress.' Yet while it may no longer form a part of our duty as men of science to deal with the fabulous lore and imperfect views of truth which obscure the past history of philosophy, the attempt to do so will not prove unprofitable. We must not adore, but we should not contemn antiquity. There may not be anything that is new in the past, but there is much that is both interesting and instructive. To some gleanings from the history of philosophy which appear to bear this character, the subject in hand invites our attention. In the history of an eminent individual, biographers delight to trace indications of his future talents and excellences during childhood. His boyish feats, his aspirations, his early masteries of difficulty, have all a peculiar interest, as evidence of the germs of qualities which in afterlife became so highly developed. If such the interest attaching to the early history of one philosopher, that which appertains to the history of philosophy itself is surely greater. We have undertaken, then, to speak of philosophy when, like music,

The heavenly maid was young;'

to narrate some anecdotes of her childish freaks, some of her frolics, and some of those early traces of excellency and accuracy which we now behold displayed in such admirable proportions in the full-grown science. Let the reader pay attention to our account of the childhood of philosophy, if he would learn how the child was 'father to the man.' The time preceding the birth, if we may term it, of experimental and inductive philosophy deserves, however, a passing notice at our hands.

Had philosophy no existence during the middle ages? for to this dark interval in history our thoughts are to be directed. It existed but in a commentatorial, not an experimental form. There is a distinction now drawn between a learned man and a philosopher: the latter is an experimentalist, the former a man of books. But at the time of which we speak, learned men, in our present sense of the term, were the only philosophers, and philosophy was consequently learning rather than experiment-doctrine rather than fact. Lord Bacon, in the following pithy sentence, gives us an admirable account of the state of knowledge and of its character during this period: 'It is barren in effects, fruitful in questions, slow and languid in its improvement-exhibiting in its generality the counterfeit of perfection, but ill-fitted up in its details-popular in its choice, but suspected by its very promoters, and therefore bolstered up and countenanced with artifices.' A large number of books existed, but an attentive examination of them will shew that they were entirely fabricated out of other books. Everywhere are innumerable repetitions of the same statements, adopted without hesitation, and without a moment's inquiry into their truth. So that, as the great founder of experimental philosophy has well observed, although at first sight they appear numerous, they are found upon examination to be but scanty.' Bacon set a right estimate upon them in speaking thus severely; for a book that is a copy of another is but the same