covered her face with her hands. After a pause,
she turned towards him and said:

"I will tell you this; and more you must not
ask of me. I know you are as safe as can be.
I am the girl, you are the lover, and possible
shame hangs over my father, if something— oh, so
dreadful" (here she blanched), "but not so very
much his fault, is ever found out."

Though this was nothing more than he
expected; though Ralph thought that he was aware
what the dreadful something might be, yet, when
it was acknowledged in words, his heart
contracted, and for a moment he forgot the intent,
wistful, beautiful face creeping close to his to
read his expression aright. But after that his
presence of mind came in aid. He took her
in his arms and kissed her; murmuring fond
words of sympathy, and promises of faith, nay,
even of greater love than before, since greater
need she might have of that love. But somehow
he was glad when the dressing-bell rang, and in
the solitude of his own room he could reflect on
what he had heard; for the intelligence had been
a great shock to him, although he had fancied
that his morning's inquiries had prepared him
for it.

SKIN DEEP

There is nothing new under the sun— a
sentence which is in itself very far from a
novelty. The ancient Egyptians knew all about
wigs; the classical Romans were not ignorant
of hair-powder; the Hindoos of early ages were
skilled, as some suppose, in a more dangerous
form of powder— to wit, that which is
discharged from guns. The Chinese understood
printing and the use of the compass, long before
any idea of such things had crossed the minds
of us dilatory Occidentals; and, perhaps, some
day it will be discovered that they photographed
the Great Wall while it was in process of building,
and drove railway-engines across " the
barren plains of Sericana," as well as "cany
waggons light." But, not to go back so far,
here are the advocates of the Oriental Bath
telling us that the principal object of that
institution is to relieve the skin — and through the
skin the whole system — of effete matter; that
the seven million pores with which we are
provided are constantly being clogged by the
dead, worn-out particles deposited there by the
natural processes of decay and renovation; that
the great cleansing process of perspiration is
thus checked and impeded; that the minute
blood-vessels of the cutis bring every drop of
blood in the body to the surface several times
an hour, in order that by contact with the open
air it may be purified, renewed, and oxygenated,
as well as enabled to deposit those organic
elements which go to the formation of fresh
epidermis, to replace that which has performed
its office, and passed into the condition of decay;
that unless this draining of the animal economy
be effectually carried on, disease is certain to
ensue, either in a chronic or an acute form;
and that, when duly observed, health is the sure
result. And there can be no doubt that all this
is perfectly true, even if the sudatorium itself
be an exaggeration or an imposition.

But there is nothing new in it. The practice
is as old as mankind, and the theory was
distinctly stated two centuries and a half ago by
an Italian physician who was long regarded as a
modern Galen or Æsculapius, but of whom we
now hear very little. At the latter end of the
sixteenth and commencement of the seventeenth
centuries, one Santorio — or Sanctorius, according
to his Latinised name — was the most famous
leech in Europe. He was a native of Capo
d'Istria (at that time belonging to Venice), but
studied at the University of Padua, where he
became Professor of Physic. He was in such
demand, however, by the great lords and ladies
of Venice, and was so frequently required to
visit the ocean city of palaces, to prescribe for
the real or imaginary ailments of those
aristocratical republicans, that he was at length
obliged to give up his chair at Padua, where he
had lectured for thirteen years, and to settle
under the sway of the Doges and of the Council of
Ten. The grateful Paduans continued his salary,
and he maintained his brilliant reputation until
his death in 1636, at the age of seventy-five.
His fame chiefly arose from the observations he
made, and the theories he put forth, on the
subject of transpiration, or perspiration. In
these he anticipated many of the arguments by
which writers like Mr. Erasmus Wilson and
others, justify the use of the Turkish Bath.
The laws of perspiration had been but slightly
investigated before the time of Santorio; but
by him they were observed with extraordinary
closeness, and systematised with more precision
than was usual in those days. He invented a
weighing-chair, by means of which he examined
the quantity and character of perspiration as
determined by different conditions of the body;
as, for instance, under various degrees of
temperature, and in the intervals of eating, drinking,
and sleeping. In this way he discovered
that in Italy, with a moderate diet and easy life,
a middle-aged man insensibly perspires five-
eighths of the food he consumes; and that
in the space of a night's time he thus gets
rid of forty ounces. If he eat and drink
eight pounds in a day, five pounds are spent
in this manner; and the process of exudation
proceeds, according to the old Italian, in this
wise: Within five hours after eating, about a
pound is thrown off; from the fifth to the
twelfth hour, about three pounds; and from the
twelfth to the sixteenth, scarcely half a pound.
Women perspire much less than men; and,
from the subsequent experiments of a French
physician, it appears that this important operation
of nature is performed to a far greater
extent in youth than in age.

The sum of his observations induced Santorio
to form a medical theory, which he probably
pushed too far, as discoverers and enthusiasts
are apt to do, but which seems to embody a