men are weak, and can only, with all their efforts,
bring down such rotten fruit as has in its
dead stem no hold upon the tree, or else
they are mere charlatans and impostors, who
have taken the apples up in their pockets, to
throw them down again to the gaping crowd
below. There are members of that crowd who
receive the fruit eagerly, and feed upon it to
their hurt, but the wiser among them can detect
an earthly taint in it, and do their best to warn
their neighbours away from it.

Among those who carry up into high places
the fruit which they profess to gather when they
get there, the modern material spiritualists
occupy a prominent place; and it is a singular
instance of the ravenous state we are in for
knowledge of the unseen, that people will almost
help their spiritual aëronaut to stow away in his
pockets, before he mounts the Tree, the very
apples which, when thrown down again to them,
they take to be fruit grown on those high
branches which are out of our reach. They are
also quite willing to wait till it is dark before
the apples descend to them, in order that they
may neither see their prophet pull them out of
his pocket, nor be able to detect the smile upon
his countenance as he plays the trick.

That a spiritualism of chairs and tables, and
auctioneer's hammering, should ever have taken
hold of the minds of even the weaker members
of our society, is a sufficient proof of the extremity
of hunger we are in for some of those
same apples which grow away from our reach,
and beyond the range of mortal eyesight.

But other matter to take hold of the speculative
mind, has of late been furnished by our
Scientific Prophets, and this matter, as the
result of researches made by good men and
true, may occupy us fairly enough. And it
is curious to observe that these last discoverers
make no mystery of their mode of working.
When they climb they show us how they
climb, and bid us watch  —  by broad daylight
—  every step of their upward progress. They
bid us watch them with telescopes and
instruments when our weak eyes fail, and so
follow them to that point where, as their
strength gives way, they stretch out a feeble
and exhausted hand to grasp at the fruit, of
which sometimes they only bring down a
portion, while oftenest, it slips away from them
even at the last, and they descend to earth,
worn and despondent, with only tidings of what
the apple was like. Honour to these true prophets,
and confusion, doubly confounded, to the
false!

Now, these last remarks have been called
forth by the strange prognostications of
possible changes in the earth's condition which
have lately reached us from different quarters,
and at different times, and which seem dimly to
hint at things to stir the souls of those who
have time and opportunity to watch what is
going on around them, in a speculative temper
of mind. It was but the other day that a
great chemist and scientific authority thought
it needful to warn the world that there was
reason to fear that a certain element in the
soil, necessary to the production of the food
we live on, was in many parts of the civilised
globe gradually wearing out. To how many
startling speculations does the mere suggestion
of such a possibility as this, give rise! What if
this should be the end of our greatness. The
greatness of Rome and of Greece was brought to an
end; will ours terminate through the slow decay
of the very ground we live on? Who can keep
his fancy in order, after once suffering it to
entertain such an idea? With the eye of imagination
one sees, year by year, the country growing less
and less productive, the harvests becoming
poorer and poorer. Then, the stimulants and
sauces with which we have of late tried to
revive the digestive powers of the jaded old soil
begin to fail, and the patient is subjected to a
course of still more pungent tonics and appetisers,
under which, its powers revive a little,
but only for a very, very short time, after which
there is a terrible reaction, and the case becomes
desperate. And now, what solemn consultations
take place, what discussions go on in the
newspapers. How, one after another, all sorts
of expedients are suggested; one gentleman,
writing to the Times to say that he has tried
sprinkling his back-garden with cayenne pepper
with the most happy results; while another has
produced a fine crop of turnips by syringing
his field with toast-and-water. Every correspondent
entirely disproves what the man before
him asserted, and what the " Constant Reader"
swears by, the "Old Subscriber" denounces.
At last we have a final meal on water-cresses,
and stinging-nettles, and come to the conclusion
that poor old England must be abandoned like
the '"Deserted Village," and that we must be
off to some other part of the globe with all
convenient speed.

What an exodus that will be. Off we go,
carrying our sick in litters. Æneas has his
father on his back, and his infant daughter
carries a kitten under her arm. What preparations
have to be made before we start. What
impossible things we want to take with us.
One gentleman is for taking up all the railway
lines dispersed over the kingdom, and transporting
them to the new country; another
thinks we might take the Houses of Parliament
with us if we numbered the stones and set
them up again in their proper order. (But in
Heaven's name let us leave it behind.) Then
where should we go? What negotiation would
be necessary with foreign powers? The move
would be westward, of course almost all
movement has been in a westerly direction, from
the beginning of the world to the establishment
of Tyburnia and South Kensington.
Westward we should go, probably across the
Atlantic. By that time the population of the
States might be exterminated, and we might
meet with no opposition.

Another rather startling theory has lately
been put forward —   the earth, it seems, is
growing cold. We are told that its internal heat,
its vital warmth we may almost call it, is