you say. What matters, if I directed the
imagination to cure? Now you have mocked the
unhappy ones out of their last chance of life. They
will suffer and perish. Did you believe me in
error? Still you knew that my object was
research into truth. You employed against your
brother in art venomous drugs and a poisoned
probe. Look at me! Are you satisfied with
your work?"

I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from
the dying man's grasp. I could not do so without
using a force that would have been inhuman.
His lips drew nearer still to my ear.

"Vain pretender, do not boast that you
brought a genius for epigram to the service
of science. Science is lenient to all who offer
experiment as the test of conjecture. You
are of the stuff of which inquisitors are
made. You cry that truth is profaned when
your dogmas are questioned. In your shallow
presumption you have meted the dominions of
nature, and where your eye halts its vision, you
say, 'There, nature must close;' in the bigotry
which adds crime to presumption, you would
stone the discoverer who, in annexing new realms
to her chart, unsettles your arbitrary landmarks.
Verily, retribution shall await you. In those
spaces which your sight has disdained to explore
you shall yourself be a lost and bewildered straggler.
Hist! I see them already! The gibbering
phantoms are gathering round you!"

The man's voice stopped abruptly; his eye
fixed in a glazing stare; his hand relaxed its
hold; he fell back on his pillow. I stole from
the room; on the landing-place I met the nurse
and the old woman-servant. Happily the
children were not there. But I heard the wail of the
female child from some room not far distant.

I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, "All is
over!"—passed again under the jaws of the vast
anaconda—and, on through the blind lane between
the dead walls—on through the ghastly streets,
under the ghastly moon—went back to my
solitary home.

THE new romance by SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON will be continued from week to week
for six months. On its completion, it will be succeeded by a new serial story by MR. WILKIE
COLLINS, to be continued from week to week for nine months.

The repeal of the Duty on Paper will enable us, with the commencement of our next volume,
greatly to improve the quality of the material on which ALL THE YEAR ROUND is printed, and
therefore to enhance the mechanical clearness and legibility of these pages. Of the Literature
to which we have a new encouragement to devote them, it becomes us to say no more than that
we believe it would have been simply impossible, when paper was taxed, to make the present
announcement.

CONFECTIONER'S BOTANY.

WHEN in this nineteenth century we sip our
chocolate flavoured with vanilla, let us breathe
a sigh for the degradation and imprisonment
of that grand old monarch, the Emperor
Montezeuma, whose life is graphically described
by MR. PRESCOTT in his charming history
of the Conquest of Mexico. The splendour
and luxury of the royal household before the
appearance of the Spaniards in Mexico, is
almost fabulous, and reminds one of an Arabian
Nights tale. "The emperor took no other
beverage than the chocolate—a potation of
chocolate flavoured with vanilla and other
spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a
froth the consistency of honey, which gradually
dissolved in the mouth. This beverage, if so it
could be called, was served in golden goblets,
with spoons of the same metal or of tortoiseshell,
finely wrought. The emperor was
exceedingly fond of it, to judge from the quantity
—no less than fifty jars or pitchers being
prepared for his own daily consumption. When
the royal appetite was appeased, pipes made of
a varnished and richly gilt wood were brought,
from which he inhaled—sometimes through
the nose, at others through the mouth—the
fumes of an intoxicating weed called tobacco,
mingled with liquid amber." Ever since the
year 1519, when Spanish Cortes made himself
master of the country of the Aztecs, the luxuries
and natural productions of this highly-favoured
land have been gradually introduced into Europe,
among which the vanilla is esteemed as one of
the greatest additions to our delicate
confectionary.

The Vanilla Aromatica is an orchidaceous
climbing plant, partly parasitic in its habit. It
roots itself naturally in the ground; but, in the
upper part, receives its nourishment from the
tree against which it grows. In the countries
where the plant is cultivated for commercial
purposes, care is taken to choose a position
where light and air are freely admitted. The
upper branches are fastened to a tree, where
they quickly take root and fasten themselves by
means of their spiral tendrils. The leaves are
oblong, heart-shape, of a bright green colour
on the upper side, paler underneath, and have
several prominent veins running through them.
They are produced alternately at every joint,
and have very short footstalks. The flowers are
of a greenish white colour, very small, with five
spreading divisions. The seeds are produced in
long three-sided fleshy pods, which contain an
aromatic oil exhaling the peculiar fragrance
characteristic of the plant, on which account they
are imported to Europe. The name vanilla
seems to be a corruption of the Spanish word