come before this discovery could be made: as any
person will at once understand, who is told that
to haul in only twenty-four hundred fathoms of
line, without the sinker, it was necessary—not
only to use a twelve-horse-power steam-engine,
but to raise the steam until there was a pressure
of twelve pounds on the square inch.

Soundings in the Atlantic have been particularly
pushed forward, and have excited, on account
of the telegraph cable, more general interest than
any others yet taken. They have revealed the fact
that at least two hundred and thirty miles from
the coast of Ireland, the water is still shallow: or,
in other words, that there is another Ireland only
waiting to be raised—thus reversing the famous
panacea for keeping the country quiet. It is
just beyond this, that the true Atlantic begins:
the gulf suddenly sinking to nine thousand feet.
Thus, Ireland may one day have a coast line as
high as the Alps. The whole floor of the
Atlantic is paved with a soft sticky substance,
called oaze, nine-tenths consisting of very minute
animals, many of them mere lumps of jelly, and
thousands of which could float with ease in a
drop of water; some, resembling toothed wheels;
others, bundles of spines, or threads shooting from
a little globule. Some, however, are endowed with
the property of separating flint from the sea water
—which is more than every chemist could do;
and there are hundreds of square miles covered
with the skeletons of these little creatures. Part
of this oaze is doubtless from the clouds of rain-
dust which rise from the vast steppes of South
America in such masses as to darken the sun,
and make the animals fly to shelter, and which,
after sweeping like a simoom over the country,
lose themselves in the "steep Atlantic." No
bones have been found of the larger animals, so
that the kraken and sea-serpent might sleep their
last sleep, and leave not a bone or a vertebra to
tell the tale. Not a mast or anchor, not a block
or strand, not a coin or a keepsake, has been
found, to testify of the countless gallant ships
and more gallant men who have gone down amid
the pitiless waves.

Only Mr. Ansted's book itself, can show how
pleasantly and usefully its writer gossips about
the newest discoveries in the fascinating branches
of science.

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MY reader is sufficiently acquainted with me
by this time to know that there is one quality
in me on which he can always count with safety
—my candour! There may be braver men and
more ingenious men, there may be, I will not
dispute it, persons more gifted with oratorical
powers, better linguists, better mathematicians,
and with higher acquirements in art; but I take
my stand upon candour, and say, there never
lived the man, ancient or modern, who presented
a more open and undisguised section of himself
than I have done, am doing, and hope to do to
the end. And what, I would ask you, is the
reason why we have hitherto made so little progress
in that greatest of all sciences—the knowledge
of human nature? Is it not because we
are always engaged in speculating on what goes
on in the hearts of others, guessing, as it were,
what people are doing next door, instead of
honestly recording what takes place in our own
house?

You think this same candour is a small quality.
Well, show me one thoroughly honest
autobiography. Of all the men who have written
their own memoirs, it is fair to presume that
some may have lacked personal courage; some
been deficient in truthfulness; some forgetful
of early friendships, and so on. Yet where will
you find me one, I only ask one, who declares,
"I was a coward. I never could speak truth.
I was by nature ungrateful?"

Now, it would be exactly through such confessions
as these our knowledge of humanity
would be advanced. The ship that makes her
voyage without the loss of a spar or a rope,
teaches little; but there is a whole world of information
in the log of the vessel with a great
hole in her, all her masts carried away, the captain
invariably drunk, and the crew mutinous.
Then, we hear of energy and daring and ready-
wittedness, marvellous resource, and indomitable
perseverance. Then, we come to estimate
a variety of qualities that are only evoked by
danger. Just as some gallant skipper might
say, "I saw that we couldn't weather the point,
and so I dropped anchor in thirty fathoms, and
determined to trust all to my cables;" or, "I
perceived that we were settling down, so I
crowded all sail on, resolved to beach her."
In the same spirit, I would like to read in some
personal memoir, "Knowing that I could not
rely on my courage; feeling that if pressed hard,
I should certainly have told a lie——" Oh, if we
only could get honesty like this! If some great
statesman, some grand foreground figure of his
age would sit down to give his trials as they
really occurred, we should learn more of life
from one such volume than we glean from all the
mock memoirs we have been reading for centuries!

It is the special pleading of these records that
makes them so valueless; the writer always is
bent on making out his case. It is the eternal
representation of that spectacle said to be so
pleasing to the gods—the good man struggling
with adversity. But what we want to see is the
weak man, the frail man, the man who has to
fight adversity with an old rusty musket and a
flint lock, instead of an Enfield rifle, loading at
the breech!

I'd not give a rush to see Blondin cross the
falls of Niagara on a tight-rope; but I'd cross
the Atlantic to see, say the Lord Mayor, or the
Master of the Rolls try it.

Now, much-respected reader, do not for a
moment suppose that I have, even in my most
vainglorious of raptures, ever imagined that I
was here in these records supplying the void I
have pointed out. Remember, that I have expressly
told you, such confessions, to be valuable,