learned, had not taken it into his head to dictate
sentimental letters to Lady Mary Pierrepoint, it
might, have been that we should never have
heard of innoculation, and that a great many
unnecessary deaths and useless disfigurements
would have been spared the young people
of the last century. Also, it might have
been " that the wicked wasp of Twickenham"
would have died with fewer stings proceeding,
and that posterity would have lost some witty
but very cruel and unmanly rhymes. If poor
Mrs. Thrale had not seen Piozzi standing at the
shop-door, and had not spoken to him concerning
music-lessons for her daughter, it might
have been that she would have died of ennui and
her children's coldness, and the society of the
time would not have been torn to pieces with
frantic horror of so ungenteel and debased a
match; Dr. Johnson would not, have written his
famous Remonstrance; Baretti would not have
penned his infamous lampoons; and human life
would have lost the lesson which a brave little
woman's preference of love to artificial distinctions,
preached to it from the house-tops. If
Nelson had never met that seductive gipsy
Lady Hamilton, it might have been that a
long line of lawfully baptised Nelsons would
have sustained the family honour for generations
yet to come; and then it might have
been that, with family influence to stir up the
lagging, and with family feeling to urge to that
stirring, the lions at the base of the Trafalgar
column would be now completed.

But the field is illimitable; and if we fly at all
the game we might mark down, beginning with
Adam and Eve, and ending with Disraeli's
History of Events which have not happened, we
shall not finish the subject under a volume; and
then there might be, and in all probability would
be, for the result— the rejection of this paper,
and the world's enlightenment so far delayed.

VIOLETS.

Sweet is the legend of a happy soul,
Pacing, in dreams, the sward of Paradise;
Above her hung fruits 'tinct with fiery flush,
Around her blew flowers myriad in device.

Low was the clime, a twilight arched with stars,
Long, arrowy lights on cedared hill and dale,
Filled with a mellow atmosphere whose heart
Breathed of myrrh and spice and garlingale.

She, pausing underneath the tree of life,
Heard all its mystic branches palpitate,
And a low voice:— Take thou the fairest flower
Between the eastern and the western gate.

And, rising up, she wandered forth amidst
Lilies beloved in time by Solomon;
And forest frankincense and wondrous blooms,
Whose chalices were dyed with moon and sun.

Rounding her path, there glimmered in blue dusk
Vast star-eyed blossoms, bright and marvellous—
Great charms of streaked splendour; living flowers
Lost to the fallen world and unto us.

At dawn the angel found her at the gate,
Weeping, but looping in her vesture's folds
Of all the gorgeous blooms of Paradise,
Passionate violets and marigolds.

And lifting tip her low eyes, dashed with rain,
"I paced," she said, "between the east and west;
Heaven's fairest flowers were subject to my hand,
But I did gather what I loved the best."

Answered the radiant angel, " Sweet and wise,
Thy tender care hath chosen the fairer part,
Henceforth shall violets be loved of love,
And marigolds refresh the tired heart.

"Awake!" And she unclosed her eyes to see
The morning sunlight beating on the blind;
And round her bed the breath of marigolds
Swam with the violets' on the garden wind.

MEDIUMS UNDER OTHER NAMES.

When was juggling a thing that was not, and
when were there no prestidigitators in this
lumbering old world of ours? Men with clean
brisk fingers daintily tapering at the tips, supple-
jointed, and with a marvellous amount of
sensibility about the cushion; men with flexible
palms, broad and yet compact, well hollowed in
the cup, and with the large blue muscle of the
thumb, soft, springy, and well developed; men
with hands and fingers which, if viciously
educated, would take to picking the pockets of a
lay figure hung round with bells, and never stir
the most loosely hung clapper of them all; but
which would, if virtuously inclined, content
themselves with forcing cards, bringing pigeons
out of wine-bottles, and sending half a dozen
half-crowns rattling into a glass box by no other
means apparently possible than an invisible' railway.
Among the ancients and among the
savages— in the rough old mediaeval times and
now, in this luxurious learned scientific and
all-inquiring nineteenth century— whenever men
have gathered together in companies there has
been the juggler among them. Sometimes
under a religious garb, as the "medicine-man,"
the priest teaching truths, or the pythoness
uttering oracles, one to whom the Great Spirit
has given peculiar gifts and consecrated to
the task of instructing men by bestowing an
exclusive knowledge of divine things;
sometimes as the magician, the professed trafficker
with viewless spirits, good or bad, according
to the moral nature of the man and the
character of the tricks done, but viewless spirits
nevertheless— things of supernatural powers and
supernatural existence, which, if they did in
truth haunt any man, would send him mad
outright, or kill him with awe and horror;
and sometimes, more simply, as the true
juggler, the professor of hocus-pocus, who
confesses that he does all his marvels by trick
and sleight of hand, and who pretends to no
superiority save what is found in keen sight,
well-shaped fingers, a good memory, and untiring
industry. It is of these last, by far the cleverest,
and the honest men of the MEDIUM tribe, that
I am now going to speak; and when one knows
what has been done by mere dexterity of
arrangement and quickness of hand, sundry
miracles of the present time will sink into
insignificance, and will be held as by no means to be
compared with hundreds of acknowledged tricks,